


The New Romance

by rvst



Series: We Three Idiots [8]
Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, Fluff, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-30
Updated: 2015-11-10
Packaged: 2018-04-24 02:55:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 30,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4902856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rvst/pseuds/rvst
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of vaguely connected one-shots that aren't long enough to warrant their own stories.</p><p>Basically: here, have a bunch of fluff.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Belgian Problem

 

**One**

 

 

Laura was wearing a bow-tie. Danny nearly fainted dead away at the black thing around Laura’s neck, and she struggled to take in the rest of her outfit. There was a well-fitted blazer involved and that was as far as she got before Laura was interrupting her train of thought.

“Good evening gorgeous. Vampire,” Laura added to her other girlfriend who was oh so entranced in the pretentious hardcover she was reading that night. “Are you ready?”

“Have her home fully dressed, please!” Carmilla shouted through the door as Danny closed it behind her. “I will not tolerate half-naked women in my room without me!”

Danny went bright red, she kicked the door with the back of her heel, effectively silencing their mutual girlfriend. “Ignore the asshole please.”

Laura giggled, “I kind of like that asshole, she’s cute and stuff.”

They set off toward wherever Laura had planned for their evening out together. “I kind of like her too, very inconvenient,” added Danny. “Where are you taking me tonight?”

Laura shrugged, taking Danny’s hand into her own with an unusual hesitance. They were usually very casual with each other after the first date hesitance. Then there was the whole ‘Laura is a bull-headed jerk sometimes who didn’t quite get what the word demisexual entails’ debacle.

“You aren’t going to tell me?” Danny nudged Laura with her hip in false annoyance. “That is so mean, Hollis.”

Laura nodded. “I am a very cruel person, ask anyone,” she replied, dragging Danny by their joined hands toward the largest lecture hall on the Silas campus. “We are going to see some live theatre.”

Danny stopped, digging in her heels as Laura tried to force her forward. She glared at her girlfriend with no small amount of fear and disbelief.

“What?” Laura asked innocently. Her confusion only seemed to fuel Danny’s building annoyance filled rage. “You like theatre, it’s like the only activity outside of reading that you both are willing to admit you enjoy. It’s not something I’m forgetting in a hurry.”

“We’re going to the Shakespeare Appreciation Week?” Danny’s flabbergasted tone didn’t leave Laura exactly feeling the love and this was the first time they both had free in the last month so it just added a burning layer of time being wasted to the injury of Danny seemingly rejecting her date idea out of hand. “The one being held here? At Silas?”

Danny speaking to her like she was an idiot missing something wasn’t even remotely okay, and Laura felt the fires of indignation getting ready to burst forth in vicious words and energy she couldn’t burn off with sex like she would with Carmilla. Danny trusted the vampire before Laura, and she would be lying if she said it didn’t hurt as much as she tried to accept Danny’s decision. “And your problem is?”

On a regular night, Danny would back down immediately from Laura’s words, said through gritted teeth. Coupled with the clenched free fist and the sudden vice-grip on her own hand, Danny generally retreated without any major fight having a chance to begin. There was usually no beating Laura when she decided Danny or Carmilla were using their superior age or size or experience to talk down to her on a subject she had actually given some careful thought. If she wanted to go fight the forces of evil at Silas all by herself then they had no right to question her decisions. It wasn’t like they were married.

This was not a regular night and Danny honestly wasn’t dealing with it.

“That I don’t actually want to die, so I’m not going in there. You’re insane if you do,” Danny answered before removing her hand and turning to go back to her own quarters with the Summer Society. “Goodnight Laura!”

“What’s so freaking wrong with some Shakespeare?” Laura nearly yelled at Danny’s retreating back. Against her better judgement, Danny stopped and turned around to catch a brief glimpse of how unsettled Laura was by her walking away. The expression was gone as soon it was there but Danny caught it. “Are they bad?”

Danny couldn’t believe this girl sometimes. She might have been mostly right about Carmilla in the end, but that didn’t mean that she would be right about how harmless and trustworthy everything else housed in the university was. Laura Hollis would be wrong one day, and Danny could feel her bones breaking and her blood being drained on that day.

“It’s Shakespeare. At Silas,” she tried to convey all of her hesitance about Laura’s plan, and her genuine fear leaked through making her case better if Laura’s face was anything to go by. “You don’t see the clear and present danger surrounding going to a production of,” Danny paused, bracing for whatever horror was awaiting her next question, “which play?”

Laura heard Danny’s scared voice, and considered her plan beyond ‘Danny likes live theatre and fake violence could lead to cuddles’. It was the second part than made her scrunch up her hands in anger at herself. Lying was always an option in these situations. Danny’s hands went to her hips and she raised her eyes from Laura to stare at lecture hall. Lying would only be a valid option unless they had completely failed to advertise which play they were doing at this point in their week.

“If I apologise right now, can we forget this ever happened and go somewhere pretty and cuddle please?” Laura forced out as quickly as she could. “We can swing by the room and grab that chocolate you pretend you don’t like?”

Danny let the fear drain from her body though a title did float into her mind when she watched Laura’s muscles coil into attention as she spoke. “It’s ‘Titus Andronicus’, isn’t it?”

Trying to muster up some kind of indignation, Laura puffed herself up to roughly as tall as she could be with the body she was given to work with. It was not much and she deflated as soon as she got to full height and puff. “It might be,” she admitted, wishing it was literally anything else. ‘Romeo and Juliet’, no matter how much Danny hated it with passion barely rivalled by her hatred for chemistry, would have been better. Even if the supernatural aura and general mayhem of Silas forced them into portraying the eponymous couple, it wouldn’t quite stack up to the play that was currently on.

“Can I re-offer the chocolate?” Laura tried again. “I would like to forget I tried to get us both killed, and should we be doing something about that if they’re actually going to try and kill people? I think we should do that first, go get your sword,” Laura changed gears exceptionally quickly mid-thought. Danny wanted to leave, but they really couldn’t leave whatever innocent students had wandered into the lecture hall to be killed by the most violent play in Shakespeare’s entire career.

“My sword is at home, you are absolutely giving me the chocolate for this, and,” Danny paused to lean down and kiss Laura on her cheek, “no sex for at least a week.”

Danny walked off back the way they came, leaving Laura confused beyond belief.

“What the hell?” Laura asked herself. “I’ve missed something.”

Every other day, Laura wished she had spent more time dating in her secondary educational career. Perhaps something back then would have prepared her for having a girlfriend with a sexuality she still didn’t completely understand, and another girlfriend who could only be described as complications incarnate. Surely there had to be something in the teenage romantic experience that she almost completely missed out on despite various fumbling endeavours in the backseats of a few girl’s cars that could help her understand what the hell was going on.

“Laura!” Danny was glaring again so Laura’s feet charged forward, her face remaining a bright red. “Thank you.”

=====

There was absolutely no fatalities on the horizon for the Shakespeare Appreciation Week at Silas University. There was bucket loads of smaller animal sacrifices, but that wasn’t lives in danger and they had abandoned a perfectly good date night to thwart an evil that could have waited until the morning or even the end of the week. Waiting until the end of the week to do something about it appealed to the dramatic side of Laura Hollis. Also appealing to this part of Laura was the urge to explode at Danny for being unnecessarily worrisome about basically everything.

Laura felt her usual rush at a group of people well-saved but tucked it away as far as possible. She needed to be a little angry at Danny for interrupting their date with her silly saving people thing. Then she would reprimand herself as well for wanting to go stop the problem as much as Danny did. Then there were her slightly more primal urges and the giantess who implied that she could have been climbing her like a tree instead of saving the boundless idiots attending Silas University. Laura wanted to hunt down and murder each and every one of them for interrupting.

It wasn’t that Laura didn’t try her best to be supportive. Danny barely had a word for her feelings when she freaked out literally on top of Laura. Carmilla was a well-read godsend in that moment, even though she was trying her best to appear disaffected by the whole situation. Probably had something to do with the fact that they had only just gotten back from their first date the night before. If Laura were asked, which she wasn’t, Carmilla was hanging around because the girl she went on a date with one night, was on top of Laura the very next night. They got better at dealing with sharing as time went by over the few months they had all been together.

Danny collapsed onto the bed Laura shared with Carmilla, dropping her sword carelessly in a corner of their room. Laura tried not to find the way she lay on the bed, stretched out with her shirt riding up her stomach, immeasurably attractive.

“You have that chocolate right?” Danny groaned out. “Damn I need something good after that,” she whined, continuing her stretching and driving Laura nuts. “Somewhat murderous drama students I can handle. The rhyming nearly killed me.”

Laura stumbled over her own feet to get at the mini-fridge where she was keeping the box of chocolates her father gave her every time she went home for a visit. The guilt at thinking of Danny sexually burned and she had to find some way of combating the feeling, chocolate was always there for her when it came to grovelling. Even Carmilla could be swayed by chocolate if it was pretty much frozen. Laura longed for simple girlfriends sometimes. Danny groaned again as she worked out a niggling pain in her knee, Laura thought simplicity could go jump off a cliff.

 

 

* * *

 

 

**Two**

 

 

Danny Lawrence wasn't stupid. She knew exactly what Laura was doing, and that her tiny girlfriend thought she was getting away with it.

Danny saw the way one corner of her mouth would tick upward whenever Laura managed another small victory. Watched as she bounced away to record the win in whatever imaginary log she no doubt had going.

Carmilla wanted nothing to do with the dangerous game Laura was playing. She was walking on hot coals and didn't seem like she was treading lightly. It was bound to end with someone burned, most likely Laura, but Danny was an outside chance.

"You just going to stand there and let her do that to you?" Carmilla couldn't help but question, breaking Danny's keen staring at Laura's retreating back. Danny blinked as if exiting a trance, and winked at Carmilla.

Laura gave no indication that she heard Carmilla, returning the elegant box to its place at the bottom of her desk drawers. She failed to notice Danny slowly creeping up behind her, nor the intent focus Carmilla suddenly had on whatever old book she was reading today. Laura squeaked as long arms wrapped around her waist, fingers trailing along her sensible faux-leather belt. She pushed back into Danny's warmth, letting her girlfriend use her height to encircle her body completely.

"Did you have fun at home?" Danny whispered, her lips barely grazing Laura's right ear. Laura fought the groan that tried to form, placing her hands over Danny's frustratingly stationary pair. She felt Danny's fingers flex, and wondered at how much bigger they were than her own. "Get any other," Danny trailed off.

Laura's heart thumped once in her chest to remind her that she was playing with fire, tempting Danny like she did. It was too irresistible to pass up though! She couldn't resist taking a run at Danny's usually rock solid defences, Laura was only human. She squirmed in Danny's firm hold, trying to turn to see why her girlfriend stopped. The arms held her body still, though she managed to twist her neck so she was met with piercing blue eyes.

"Hi," she said, barely more than a breath. Danny smirked. Then all she knew was chocolate.

Danny lips were on hers in a heartbeat, forcing the bitter sweetness into Laura's mouth. Laura melted, unable to do more than keep up with Danny's slow, torturous pace. Her nails dug into the spaces between Danny's knuckles, revelling in her own gift mixed with her girlfriend. Laura whined deep in her throat when Danny straightened her back, taking her lips away from Laura's. Laura rose to her toes to try and follow and failed.

"Treats?" Danny finally finished, taking in Laura's red cheeks and still-closed eyes with a deep pleasure. Laura shook her head slowly to the left and even slower back to the right. Danny sighed, forcing Laura to open her eyes. "Damn, Hollis. It's mean to give a girl a taste of heaven, then take it away so," she paused to capture Laura in another carefully teasing kiss, "suddenly."

Then the warmth was gone. No arms around her, no body pressed against her own. Laura whirled around to see Danny settling into bed next to Carmilla, as if nothing ever happened. She couldn't form words, or noises, so she stood still and gaped.

Danny took no notice of Laura sitting at her laptop, eagerly searching for the brand of imported chocolate her father sent her back to Silas with as a gift to her friends.

"You know she has more, right?" Carmilla whispered, careful to keep her words below Laura's hearing. She felt Danny's body shake as it tucked around her, grinning lips pressed into her neck. "Or are you going to kill her for making you eat something so horrid for your health?"

"Shush you, I have a plan," said Danny against Carmilla's throat, her breath hitting that one spot she absolutely knew was there. "Did you want some?"

The question was innocent, but Carmilla felt the burning undertone and deliberately closed her book and placed it carefully on she shelf above their headboard.

"Hey! None of that without me you two!"  


 

 

* * *

 

 

**Three**

 

 

Laura came home to what seemed like an empty house. Carmilla was supposed to be home but the vampire had been spending more and more of her time in the attic she and Danny spent a month converting into a greenhouse. Laura didn’t love having the roof of her house being made of expensive and potentially magical glass, it struck her as dangerous during a storm at the very least. She hung up her keys on the stupid antlers LaFontaine bought them as a housewarming present, and kicked off her sensible flats into the pile by the door. Her bag went to beside the bottom step, ready to be taking back to her office once she was done not being on her feet for more than ten seconds.

“I’m firing his ass if he does that again,” she groaned to herself, shuffling lethargically into their nice sitting room with the big comfy couch and the warm fireplace. That would be fantastic. “Especially if it’s winter, then I’m having him blacklisted or his head shaved.”

Rubbing her eyes and combing a hand through her mussed hair, she didn’t get a good look at said overly-large couch until she already flopped onto it. The first thing that she was aware of was the their couch was abnormally warm. Then it started moaning and moving. The couch attacked her, grabbing her around the waist and holding her down.

“Two months away, and I get greeted via dive bomb,” the couch said. Laura froze, ceasing her struggling. “A woman can’t even take a nap without her wife attacking her in her sleep anymore. What is the world coming to?”

Laura lifted her head to take in her wife. Her face was several shades darker, and a lazy smile tugged at the corners of her lips. Laura felt the complete lack of squishing flesh on the body beneath her. Danny had only been gone for two months, how intensive was boot camp in Styria? “Hi.”

“Hey,” Danny whispered, her hand idly stroking up and down Laura’s spine. “Is Greg being a dick again? Why did you hire him?”

Laura rolled her eyes and let her head fall onto Danny’s chest. “Greg is always a dick, but he ain’t afraid of no ghost, so.”

Danny’s free hand ran through Laura’s hair, pulling out a rather large leaf. “Don’t you have a desk job now?” Danny asked, eyebrows raised while she twirled the leaf between her fingers. “Or did the roof cave in because stupid Greg took out a load-bearing pole again?”

Snorting, Laura snuggled further into Danny’s warm body, enjoying the fruits of the well-ablaze fire in the ostentatious fireplace. “The building is as structurally wobbly yet still standing as ever. Greg is ‘sick’ and I had to take over his day of research.”

Danny hummed, tickling Laura’s ear. Distantly she heard the trap door to their attic open and close slowly, and knew instinctively that her other wife was done being an upstairs cat for the moment. Laura traced over Danny’s newly defined arms as she wondered if Danny was too tired to actually cook something interesting for her wives or if Laura and Carmilla were going to be exiled to boring, bland home cooked food or heart stopping yet delicious home delivered artificial colours and flavours.

“Where was the research?”

Carmilla went to the kitchen and Laura was pleased to hear the water running. She was totally upstairs. “Suspected werewolf den,” Laura mumbled, realisation dawning upon her that she now probably reeked to Carmilla’s sensitive nose. “Not too far from here actually.”

“Greg couldn’t handle those wolves,” Danny stated. “They would tear him apart, that god-awful body spray would drive them nuts.” Laura froze again. “Boot camp isn’t just about getting into shape, you know.”

Laura sat up, smiling apologetically as her elbow went into Danny’s stomach. “There are werewolves there? And you didn’t tell me?” Laura pouted. The water shut off and two plastic thumps against tiled flooring confirmed her suspicions about what the hell Carmilla was doing with her evening. “I cannot believe I married a military woman and I don’t even get insider information out of her.”

Danny wasn’t having any of it. “Maybe if you got a little better at bribery, then the nice soldier will tell you everything she knows about the size of the pack and their migratory patterns in the winter,” teased Danny, grasping Laura’s thigh to get her point across. As per usual, the suggestion flew directly over Laura’s tiny head. She wiggled away from Danny’s hand and tripped over Danny’s legs as she darted off towards the kitchen.

“No, why would I want you here, don’t be ridiculous, Laura,” Danny grumbled to herself. She flushed when she heard Carmilla burst out in a single laugh. “Shut the hell up, Carmilla!”

That only encouraged the vampire as the fridge slammed shut and Laura’s shockingly heavy footfalls came racing at her at full speed. “Play nice!”

Laura slowed herself so she wasn’t going to tackle Danny, but still took the wind out of her lungs as she crashed back on top of her wife yet again. “But you make it so hard, darling,” Danny whined through the pain. Carmilla kept on laughing as she wandered her way back up the deliberately creaking stairs. “Yeah, you run!”

Burying her head in Danny’s neck, Laura giggled at Danny’s indignant yelling. Her wife was so exhausted and Carmilla was so going to have to order something in. “Are you done?”

Danny sighed. “I suppose.”

Grinning, Laura brandished her prize at her wife. “I had a story near my dad’s so I got you something,” she elaborated, opening the gold box and picking one of Danny’s favourite flavours. “Now open wide, because I don’t think you’ve had nearly enough sugar while you’ve been gone and we need to fix that as soon as possible.”

Danny’s eyes flicked between Laura’s bright and cheery face, and the offered chocolate grasped between her fingers. At least the bad day at work was a distant memory, even if it was at Danny’s expense. “Still shut up, Fangface,” Danny growled, not yelling anymore. There was no chance Carmilla wasn’t listening for more mocking material. “Not the kind of sugar I was going for, sweetie, but-”

Laura’s grin turned to a smirk as Danny caught sight of the box she was holding, eyes widening. “Yep,” she cut off the thought, popping her lips and offering the chocolate more insistently.

“New line?” Danny queried even as she closed her lips around the piece, not even bothering to pretend she wasn’t kissing her wife’s fingers while she was there. “It better be good.”

“Oh no, Laura, I can’t possibly tarnish my stupidly healthy body with your poisonous chocolate.” Danny didn’t want to know why Laura’s impression of her sounded remarkably like a woman in a bad Western, but the attempt was cute nonetheless. “My lady, you protest too much.”

Danny glared, pausing only to swallow the sinfully decadent morsel, “I am making vegetable stir-fry for dinner and you’re going to wish you hadn’t mocked me.”

Instead of kicking up a fuss and generally behaving like a five year old presented with broccoli, Laura just moaned and collapsed back on top of Danny. The ludicrously expensive chocolates fell to the floor and Danny really felt the thump of Laura’s head on her chest along with the sudden dead weight covering part of her body.

“Do you promise?” Danny rolled her eyes. “We were not as healthy as we could have been.”

Danny contemplated the benefits to letting her wives clog their arteries for one more night against exactly how much standing up would strain her already tired muscles. “Twenty minutes, then I’ll show you how the kitchen works, again.”

“Excellent plan, Private Hollis,” Laura snuggled further into Danny’s warm embrace. Danny immediately tensed, causing Laura to slowly drag her head up so she could interrogate her wife properly. She’d run the numbers, she was twice as effective as teasing secrets out of them when there was eye contact. “Are you home because you got kicked out of the army already?”

“Actually no, the exact opposite, strangely enough,” Danny hedged, cautiously avoiding Laura’s eyes. This did not help. “I do know why they wanted me in the first place.”

Laura placed her hands on either side of Danny’s head and pushed herself up to glare better at her cagey wife. She didn’t need this kind of thing, Carmilla generally had dibs on that role in the relationship. “Why did they want you, Danny?”

In one of her more tragic mistakes, Danny relented and met Laura’s eyes. “They want me to be an officer, with my own little unit to boss around. Leadership experience against werewolves, vampires, and whatever else is at a premium and I’m worth Captain or maybe higher.”

Laura chewed on her lower lip while she considered Danny’s words. Danny wanted to go back to fighting over food. “They’re not going to make you carry, like a sword while in dress uniform, are they?”

“Absolutely not!”

Danny sat up so fast her head collided with Laura’s. They turned in unison to yell at their idiot vampire. She cut them off.

“No swords, no ancient artifacts, nothing of the sort. Am I clear?” Carmilla demanded. Through the throbbing in her head, Laura managed to get close to a decent thought before Danny did.

“Weren’t you upstairs?”

Danny groaned, flopping back to lay flat on the couch, wincing as the back of her head connected with the wood inside the arm of the couch. “Oh screw you,” she growled at the evil inanimate object.

Laura leaned down so they were flush against each other again, retrieving the box of chocolates from the floor. Danny opened her mouth for more sugar while Carmilla calculated exactly where she would land after a truly majestic leap towards the human pile on the couch.

“Welcome home,” Laura whispered, bracing for Carmilla’s landing. “Missed you heaps.”

 


	2. The Bridal Style

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Carmilla's just an old-fashioned girl trying to deal with her white knight girlfriend.

 

**One**

 

 

 

Carmilla wanted to say that she hated everything about her first life. That it was universally terrible. It was close, sick nearly all the time and horribly embarrassing to suitors she couldn't even muster a false attraction to, but it wasn't total. Things rarely are, especially an entire short lifetime.

She liked it when she fainted over the stress being presented with boys and men she was expected to muster romantic interest for tended to cause. Sick already, the shock of anxiety, doubt, worry, and guilt sent her poor body into shutdown. Yet she would awake in her father's arms more often than not, being carried with care up to her bedroom. One of the few times she looked back on fondly and she had to pass out to get there. Close to universally terrible.

There was no way she was mentioning this detail of her life to anyone. Not even her little vampire family who had centuries to interrogate her, not her Laura and Danny. No one knew how utterly safe she felt, lulled into a pleasant warmth that chased away her problems. Not having to deal with the world on her own for a few moments, it was soothing in a way having Laura and Danny curled on either side of her during movie nights fell short of matching.

That was, after all, a practical choice brought on by Laura’s desire to be in the middle losing to Carmilla and Danny wanting to be annoying on the first night it became an issue, it was warm and calm. Not safe and taken care of, like flying through the air in her father's arms, even the doctor aiding her via carrying felt almost as nice. It wasn't something she wanted getting out.

In retrospect, if she wanted her little guilty pleasure that she could barely explain to herself to remain between Mircalla and Carmilla, dating two bright and determined young women probably wasn't the best idea. Especially when one of them was a giantess who had no awareness of what she was doing when she got physical.

They weren’t sleeping together, in any sense of the phrase. In fact, as far as Carmilla knew, Danny wasn’t sleeping with Laura either. That didn’t make Danny Lawrence any less of a tactile person, hugs were plentiful and Carmilla’s more detached nature was struggling to compensate. During their odd stage of ‘we’re both dating Laura but are also kind of twenty seconds and the wrong set of insults away from killing each other’, Carmilla got to watch Laura be lifted in a crushing embrace and spun around a few times while she giggled through a half-hearted protest. That was fine. Then Carmilla was rudely informed that Danny wasn’t on board with the eventual duel to the death plan Carmilla was preparing herself for, and big blue eyes turned to her, hands clearly itching to grab and touch and feel.

Carmilla did not spend the better part of a week considering what it would be like if Danny was the one with an arm hooked behind her knees, the other pulling her closer and closer. Danny’s face did concern so well and Carmilla wanted to fake a fainting spell just to see what happened.

Which was insane. She wasn’t a little girl anymore and part of her balked at being carried around like a heroine in a silly romance novel. This was a relatively small part, and it was losing the argument fast.

This was their tenth date alone and without Laura. Carmilla felt the crawling uncertainty of the future running underneath her skin. By this point in their relationship, she knew she could be with Laura long term. With Danny every single outing felt like the first and the last at the same time. While this was exhilarating, Carmilla was acutely aware of how invested Laura was in the two of them finding a way to be with each other. A break-up, however amicable or vicious, had the potential to kill off one or both of their relationships with Laura.

There was a rumour flying around Silas that the werewolf pack that nearly killed Laura several months ago was sighted near the campus again. Carmilla could still clearly picture the criss-crossed claw marks stretching across Danny’s back and utterly delectable smell of Lawrence blood hanging in the air after Xena did her hero thing. If the rapier hanging from Danny’s side was any indication, liberated from the Library one month after their not-duel to the death and the body-swapping incident, the other woman considered them to be a credible threat too.

"I know I don't have the best sense of self preservation, but going out during a full moon with a bunch of werewolves nearby sounds dumber than trying to fight a vampire without a small army backing you up," Danny broke the maybe awkward, maybe comfortable silence they had been wandering around campus in for the last half-hour. "Like shouting from rooftops that you would love to be bitten and turned into one of them while wearing a steak for a hat."

"It does not work like that," Carmilla corrected without thinking. Danny laughed, loud and wholeheartedly, and loosely laced their fingers together. Carmilla's hand felt tiny all of a sudden, fingers woefully inadequate as Danny's hand engulfed her own. "Genetic trait, not something you can be infected with."

"I remember," reassured Danny, sobering at the circumstances in which Carmilla had to bust out the werewolf knowledge. "Kind of, I mostly just have flashes of Laura really, really worried."

The feeling of being back at date one rather than the tenth surged through Carmilla. The jealously poisoning her mind when her girlfriend worried and cried and raged at someone else being hurt still felt fresh. She told herself yet again that Danny wasn't there to steal anyone, that it was six months in the past. "You nearly died on us, Jolly, some worry comes with the territory."

That sounded mostly not-terrified, Carmilla congratulated herself. Laura wanted them both, and Danny braved the Library just to spend time with her. Fretting over nothing.

The silence stretched on into the night.

People rushed around the campus, parties to get to, curfews to obey, potential werewolf attacks to avoid, a bustling Friday night at Silas. Carmilla watched them all come and go, wondering if any of them had their entire love life resting on each and every word they said. Or every word they weren't saying, questions they weren't asking for fear of the answers. The silence mocked her, called her a coward, unworthy of a woman who had thrown herself at two different highly dangerous supernatural creatures to protect a girl she wasn't even dating at the time.

"You don't have to answer or anything," Danny smashed the quiet peace, making it awkward if it wasn't already. Made worse as she stopped speaking to consider her words further. Carmilla might not have been the only one walking on perceived eggshells, a comforting thought. "But the vampire thing, there's," Danny paused again, dropping her hold on Carmilla's hand, "expectations you probably have after so long, right?"

Carmilla's brain did its best impression of a deer in headlights. Run left and presume she's insecure or unsure about the physical aspect of their relationship. Run right and dive into the pool of blood-related questions. Carmilla considered herself somewhat durable after technically dying twice, and opted for the most popular choice of the deer: let the car come and get run over.

Usually worked out well for both car and animal.

"I expect to be living on Mars in my lifetime, Lawrence," she smirked up at Danny's flushed face, "and you are going to have to be more specific."

Despite her blushing, Danny took it in stride and came out with a slightly more composed way of phrasing her question. "You haven't been pursued since you were turned, have you?"

Was Danny asking if she was secretly a deer? Carmilla blinked hard to dispel the notion from her mind. "Are we suggesting a game of Hunter and Prey?"

Danny tripped over her own feet, catching herself before she fell. "No! Is that something you wan-?" Danny stopped walking and took a deep breath. Carmilla stopped alongside her, resisting the urge to fold her arms. "Not what I meant."

"Well then what, Clifford?"

"You went after Laura with corsets and champagne and seduction eyes," Danny closed her eyes, presumably gathering strength to push beyond the awkwardness that surrounded them. "Then you completely missed me practically broadcasting my interest in you as more than a fellow Hollis-appreciator for weeks. And don't think I've forgotten about you thinking our first date was a duel to the death!"

"What does that have to do with vampire expectations?" Now she felt about as intelligent as the average deer. Maybe she did need to hunt for her food more often, she'd been having a recurring dream about slow moving rabbits for the last week. Deer blood was tastier than rabbit blood.

"The whole aggressively romantic stereotype. Is that a vampire thing or?" Danny let the question remain open. Carmilla's mouth forgot how to work momentarily. "Again, don't have to answer, I'm just curious."

"I-Why are you curious?" Attack, great plan. Carmilla wanted to slap herself.

"My two data points of dating a vampire are you chasing Laura's skirt for a semester and then clearly not having any idea how to handle being on the other side of that equation with me," Danny answered, taking a tentative step closer and putting herself just inside Carmilla's personal space. "I want to know if it's a vampire thing, a lack of experience, or if you don't want to be pursued like that and I should back off before I make it any worse?"

"No," Carmilla said under her breath, clearing her throat and repeating herself loud enough for Danny to hear. She chanced a glance up at the other woman, not sure if she liked the work her neck had to do to see the crestfallen expression darken Danny's face. Panic set in, she'd said the wrong thing and Danny was going to decide they couldn't work and it would be intolerable for Laura if she caught wind of it and please throw her back in the pit now.

"Okay, that's," Danny paused to draw in that shaking breath Carmilla usually associated with some heavy emotional thing she was off doing with Laura, "that's okay, right? I can totally back off, that's fine."

Danny was spending far too much time at that sorority of idiotic young women. Carmilla wondered how much effort it would take to talk her into just moving in with her and Laura, maybe she wouldn't be quite so nervous all the time. "I understand that you're not the dumb jock type, I do. But sometimes, sometimes you worry me, Red."

Carmilla tried for a teasing smile and reached out to grab Danny's hand, not finding her confusion in any way cute. "Not 'no' as in 'please stop and get away from me'?"

Tugging at their joined hands, Carmilla started walking towards the room she shared with Laura. "More like never, ever say anything about chasing skirts or whatever outdated slang you have in that head of yours."

Danny brightened, the mild terror gone from her eyes. She matched pace with Carmilla so she wasn't being dragged around like an unwilling hostage on a terrible date. "I solemnly swear," she promised, her voice mostly serious. Carmilla sighed, she was dating two dorks. Any vampire cool she might have once had was totally gone now.

"It isn't a vampire thing, it's a," Carmilla idly ran her thumb over Danny's knuckles while she considered her next word with great care, "bait thing."

The look that darkened Danny's face, drawing her eyebrows together and setting her usual smile to a frown reminded Carmilla that she was dating the closest thing Silas had to a white knight, sword and all. Danny's free hand came to rest on top of the hilt of her sword, fingers tensing around the leather-bound grip with barely concealed anger.

"Calm down, Xena," she softly ordered while bumping her shoulder into Danny's upper arm. "Also, 'no' as in 'I have not been pursued since I was alive'."

Danny's hand left her sword, running through her hair instead. Carmilla absolutely did not turn to catch a glimpse of it falling over her shoulders and spilling over the collar of her largely unbuttoned shirt. "Is that something you might-?"

"Yes," Carmilla interrupted before she could stop herself. Her teeth clamped down on her tongue and she focused on making the ground swallow her whole. Carmilla even sent out a silent plea for the werewolves to start attacking, anything to avoid the smug satisfaction that was radiating from the giant next to her. "How much would I have to pay you to not mention this conversation to Laura, hypothetically?"

Danny didn't take more than three seconds to consider the question. "You have to tell me where you get your flowers," Danny bargained like she'd been waiting for any kind of leverage to tease the information out of the vampire. "And if there's any descendants of your former suitors I might need to deal with in the name of not telling Laura about this?"

Just like that, the tension coiling inside Carmilla was gone. It still felt like a first date, but at least it wasn't quite a last one anymore.

"Yes, please go get yourself arrested for publicly challenging people to duels to the death, my fair heart is all aflutter at the thought," Carmilla teased, bringing the back of her hand to her forehead to mime a fainting spell. She remembered them well, and did not miss the episodes themselves. "How ever will I go on without blood being shed over me?"

For a moment, Carmilla thought she had taken the mocking too far as Danny's hand again dropped from her own. Opening her eyes, all she got was an overwhelming mane of red hair and then she was looking at the sky. The people had stopped rushing about, Carmilla noted, they were alone on the path to her building.

"Can't have a dame like you fainting in public," Danny said in an exaggerated greaser voice, as if that totally explained why she'd lifted Carmilla into her arms mid-stride like it was nothing. "What will the blue-blood class acts say?"

Carmilla looped her arms around Danny's neck, hoping that she could get away with non-verbally telling her girlfriend this wasn't overstepping. "Who cares? The real question is, what will our girl say if she catches us like this?"

Danny's even steps faltered, alarm running through the muscles Carmilla could now feel around her body. "She might presume you've died and I'm playing delivery girl again, best case scenario," she ventured, her cheeks growing as red as her hair. "About never telling Laura about any of this?"

Carmilla pulled herself up to kiss Danny's cheek. "If you're real nice to me, then I will consider telling you who my flower girl is," she whispered while Danny used the toe of her basketball shoes to push the clear glass doors of the building open. "We live on the third floor, and elevators are quite possibly the most dangerous thing in all of Styria."

Danny adjusted her grip underneath Carmilla's knees, considering the first of six flights of stairs she would have to conquer to drop her date off at her door. She shrugged.

"Worth it," Danny said plainly.

She set off and Carmilla let her head rest on Danny's shoulder. She closed her eyes and enjoyed the warmth blooming in her chest.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

**Two**  

 

 

  
“Danny Lawrence! You put me down right now!”

Carmilla paused with her key in the expensive lock on the door to the small on-campus apartment-like dorm she shared full-time with Laura and part-time with Danny. Laura yelling wasn’t exactly concerning, but the fact that she was clearly pissed right off with her other girlfriend made Carmilla seriously consider going back to Mother’s attic for more fun paperwork sorting. Shaking herself free of that particularly insane notion, she twisted the key and pushed on the heavy wood of the door. Just in case of flying objects or people, she made sure to make as much noise as possible.

“You don’t need to bite!” Danny yelled right back. A comment about being the vampire in this relationship died on Carmilla’s lips as she took in Danny rubbing her upper arm while Laura glared at her with the fire of the centre of the sun from her position lying on the floor. Danny huffed with embarrassed annoyance and fell backwards onto the couch they’d liberated from Mother’s home on campus. Laura used their coffee table as leverage to pull herself back to her feet, carefully placing weight almost entirely on her left foot.

“What the fuck?” Carmilla asked plainly. There was little point in not being direct. Laura learnt that particular lesson when she walked in on what looked like Carmilla giving Danny a hickey on the inside of her forearm and didn’t immediately jump to vampire reasons to explain it. “Are you hurt?”

Laura blushed while Danny dramatically threw her arm over her eyes. “I twisted my ankle a little,” Laura explained before glaring at Danny, “that doesn’t mean that I can’t walk by myself, thank you very much.”

“Yeah, how dare you try to take care of her,” Carmilla gently mocked, hoping to hit them both equally while she slipped her boots off and tip-toed over to fall into the couch next to Danny. “Do not hurt yourself further or there will be words.”

Danny peeked out underneath her arm to see Laura rolling her eyes. “Stop it, both of you. I’m going to finish my journalism final and if anyone gets any ideas about carrying me around because I have a boo-boo or crap like that,” she trailed off, leaving the non-specific threat hanging as she hobbled her way into the second bedroom they converted into an office.

Carmilla and Danny sat in the silence Laura rage quitting on them always left behind in her wake. Carmilla wordlessly grabbed the arm still resting on Danny’s head and pulled it around her own shoulders. She waited until she could hear Laura’s headphones running sound before speaking.

“You know she hates it,” she started, moving to be closer to Danny. The day had been long and she just wanted to curl up with her girlfriends and here they were being all annoyed with each other. “Why, pup?”

That particular pet name earned her a pinch on the exposed flesh of her arm. “Moratorium, kitty,” Danny reminded her without malice.

Carmilla retaliated ferociously, throwing her arm over Danny's stomach and resting her head on her shoulder. Danny didn't seem to notice, squeezing her eyes shut against whatever Carmilla was going to say next. "Maybe if she broke her ankle?"

Danny groaned again, letting her head back into the soft back of the couch a few times in frustration. "I blanked for a second and all I could see was Summer girls playing tough and making a minor thing so much worse."

"And how many of them did you decide needed airlifting out of the area?" Danny took a second to frown at the jab at her height, as if being rebuked by Laura short-circuited her brain. She cracked one eye open to inform Carmilla that she was an asshole, a process they had condensed to a very complex system of halfhearted glares and frustrated sighs. "You know she'll ask if she wants help."

The arm wrapped around her shoulders flexed as Danny toyed with the tips of her hair, signalling that she wasn't nearly as dejected as she was acting and that Laura and Carmilla herself didn't fully corner the market for over-dramatics in this relationship. The hand flattened behind her shoulder and Carmilla found herself being pulled all but into Danny's lap.

Danny kept her head flung back, like she had no idea what her arm was doing. "Laura bit me."

The simple statement of an obvious fact lost any seriousness with the bemusement lacing its way through the words. Perhaps Carmilla could go with her truly brilliant vampire joke that she had been saving for just this kind of occasion. She wanted to hiss and growl and possibly whine as Danny took the opportunity away from her.

"My grown-ass girlfriend bit me," she repeated as if she couldn't quite believe what she was saying, "and it wasn't even fun or vampire-related."

"Is 'grown' a word we want thrown around concerning the person who just said the words 'boo-boo' to describe an injury?" Carmilla wondered out loud. One height related joke per day, any more and she might have a two person mutiny on her hands. "On an unrelated matter, will you be staying with us tonight or is the Amazon horde stealing you away?"

Danny ran her free hand down her face. "I don't want to go," she answered quietly. Carmilla felt the pang of loneliness in her chest, Danny's disjointed living situation washing through her in a wave.

"Then don't," Carmilla whispered into her neck, shifting to wrap herself around Danny, trying to offer what comfort she could. "Give her an hour, take an ice pack in there and say you're sorry."

Danny sighed. "Then go hard on the biting angle?"

"Someone needs to sit you both down and teach you about using your words," Carmilla said, pulling back to glare in a way that communicated that the theoretical lesson was a Perry or LaFontaine thing and she wasn't getting in the middle of it unless someone was about to be banished to the couch. Laura got worryingly cold at night and Danny wouldn't fit comfortably for that kind of time.

Danny opened her eyes fully and looked to her side to take in how Carmilla had snuggled into her body without Danny herself noticing it consciously. "Can I help you?"

Carmilla did not appreciate the amusement, though the random pattern being traced along her back were a welcome addition. Without a hint of hesitation nor shame, she finished her subtle journey to curl up properly in Danny's lap. Burying her face in Danny's neck served to hide her away from any teasing she knew she was inviting. Danny's other hand came to rest on her thigh, securing Carmilla in place and humming with delight at the bright sparks of skin to skin contact running down her neck.

"The retirement plan for Silas Faculty members reads like a guided tour of Whitechapel circa 1888, and Mother kept meticulous records on each and every one of them," Carmilla complained, pressing closer to Danny in a vain attempt to hid from her charming day's work. "You can help me by making my night better than my day has been."

"Faculty members?" Carmilla had to leave her pleasant hideaway to glare at Danny for her stupid question. The analog clock Laura had insisted on buying ticked in the silence. Carmilla would never admit how many times it did this until Danny's raised eyebrows combined with her question spat out the correct implications in her tired brain. "Like, Silas University Faculty members?"

"No?" Carmilla ventured, worry suddenly chilling her to the bone. Danny used two knuckles to dig into a particularly vulnerable spot on Carmilla's thigh. "Words, Lawrence! Use your words!"

Carmilla winced as the sound of Laura placing her headphones forcefully on her desk reached her ears. The last thing she needed was a two against one assault. She dove back into the comfort and safety of the point where Danny's neck met her collarbone, hoping to hide from them both.

"What the heck are you doing out here?" Laura demanded as the door to the office bounced loudly off the wall as she threw it open.

Carmilla stayed perfectly still, like she could fool Laura into thinking she wasn't there is she didn't see her move. Danny's plan of action was fuelled entirely by a desire to keep all of her internal organs internal, something that was more of an urgent concern that she thought.

"I am sorry that I did that without your permission, I really am," she apologised quickly, cutting off whatever Laura was about to continue with, "but you freaking bit me and that's almost as ridiculous as the forces unknown that are apparently going to Jack the Ripper me once I leave my job!"

Carmilla whined, pressing her lips to Danny's neck and moving her hand to run through Danny's hair in what she hoped would be taken as calming gestures. She couldn't see what Laura's reaction was to Danny's frustrated outburst, but Danny clearly won the silent exchange as Laura retreated back into the office and closed the door far less violently than she opened it. Though Carmilla did have that crawling sensation that tended to spring up when they were mocking her behind her back.

"Did the Dean have anything written down about who or what is going to try and kill me when I resign?" Danny asked calmly. Carmilla's groan of tiredness and unwillingness caused her to huff and wrap her arm more securely around Carmilla's back.

The vampire's brain must have been broken upon the piles of paperwork, for she didn't notice what Danny was doing until she was restraining herself from biting into a jugular vein while nearly pulling out a handful of Danny's hair. "Seriously?"

Danny replied by bouncing her girlfriend in her arms, dislodging her lips from her neck with another displeased whine. Carmilla kept her eyes closed against the grin she just knew was shining down on her.

"You seem tired, darling," Danny explained, sounding like a reasonable human being that wasn't risking being bitten by both of her partners in the space of less than ten minutes time. Carmilla also objected to how long she stretched the pet name, but mostly the loss of the nice lap she was warming. "You have a nap, Laura can get some ice for her 'boo-boo', and I will strive for sainthood by making you both dinner out of the kindness of my heart."

"You suck so hard sometimes," grumbled Carmilla even as she melted into Danny's arms. The tension build up over the course of the day flowed out of her, and she was nearly asleep by the time Danny laid her in their bed. "'Ove you."

Danny kissed her on the forehead, chuckling at the slurring vampire. "Yeah, yeah, love you too."

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

**Three**

 

 

  
Laura scratched at her newly-completed tattoo, a bounce in her step as she raced up the stairs to their home. The words were there now, and they were going to stay there forever. The two women she had spent the better part of her night binding her life to were stumbling over each other several paces behind her, drunk on the occasion. They were speaking quietly to each other which set Laura’s teeth on edge. Carmilla was wandering up the path, barely taking notice of her newly-branded wife even as she twirled her tungsten wedding ring. Danny’s eyes wandered between Carmilla’s legs to Laura’s eyes, smirking as she took her sweet time catching up with them both.

“I am not one to stand on tradition,” Carmilla announced, causing Danny to snort while Laura jumped at the sudden noise. It was such a quiet and uneventful trip home and Laura was looking forward to curling up with her two lovers and not doing whatever they heck they had conjured to torture her with on the way. “But I do have a request. Now that she’s ours, I think we can let Laura in on our little secret, Xena.”

Laura froze, old fears reemerging for a moment before she relaxed completely. Danny laughing while Carmilla rubbed the back of her neck stopped the thoughts in their tracks.

“That is up to you, dear,” Danny replied with false seriousness. She stopped at the bottom of the stairs, staring at Carmilla. “Though we may never hear the end of it.”

Laura wanted to stamp her foot in frustration, she hated it when they pulled crap like this. “Secret? Explain please people!”

“Well, our dear vampire is an old-fashioned lady who-” Danny started to explain, throwing her hands wide in a grand gesture. Carmilla growled at her. “Is going to kill me.”

“Keep talking and we will see,” Carmilla threatened, rolling her eyes. Laura actually did stomp her foot this time. “She gets one tattoo and suddenly she’s five years old.”

“I wouldn’t have to behave like a damn child if you two would stop teasing me,” Laura said, honey dripping through her voice. “Be good wives and tell Laura, please?”

Danny’s goofy grin was matched only by Carmilla straightening her spine and throwing her shoulders back. Laura never saw Carmilla with better posture than when the vampire was proud of herself. “I think you should go inside, Cupcake, you don’t want to see this disgusting mess,” Carmilla tried to divert her attention. Laura glared at her from her superior position at the top of the stairs. Carmilla glared right back and Danny rolled her eyes as an impromptu staring contest started.

“Leave the door open, I might have to kick it down otherwise,” added Danny, stupid smile still plastered on her lips. “I don’t think my foot will stand up to those doors.”

“Your foot did break the crap out of my ribs, what’s a door compared to that?” Laura washed her hands of the two of them, leaving the door wide open as she went through. “Please don’t break the house, we just moved in!”

There was a long argument during her tattoo session about where they would sleep that night. Yes, they were now two thirds of the way through their marriage plans, with Carmilla’s black ring and Laura’s loopy vows over her heart, and they did technically own the house. However, there wasn’t any furniture in it yet aside from a massive dining table that was so old and potentially charged by the supernatural energies pervading throughout Styria that all three of them wanted nothing more than to chop it up and use it for firewood.

Carmilla’s proud smirk returned, “did you set up the camping gear in the dining room on your ‘run’ this morning?”

Danny stuffed her hands into her pockets, a light blush dusting her cheeks. “If she asks, tonight was entirely your idea and I had nothing to do with it.”

"There is no way in hell she's believing it wasn't your idea," Carmilla said while beckoning Danny closer with a crooked finger, "I know it was originally my idea, and I kind of want to blame you anyway."

With Carmilla halfway up the stairs, it was a rare occasion where they could look each other in the eye without anyone developing a strain in their neck. Carmilla took advantage of the situation by draping her arms around Danny's neck, humming with content delight when Danny's hands went to her hips automatically.

"Hi," whispered Danny as Carmilla bent forwards to rest their foreheads together. "If we take much longer, Laura's going to come back out here and we can't have that, she might argue."

Carmilla didn't reply verbally, instead leaning further into Danny and making her desires fully known.

Danny felt her heart hammering away inside her chest, mind racing as she debated with herself over the weirdly conventional streak Carmilla had developed since the incident with La Maupin and the resulting muddled proposal Danny and Laura were given by the vampire. While she wasn't quite as taken aback by it as Laura was, Danny struggled to reconcile the slightly pretentious dishevelled brooding philosopher with this alien creature that went out of her way to put down roots, developing permanent ties to the world and binding herself willingly to people and places like never before.

"You ever going to tell me why you like this kind of thing?" Danny asked, quickly working out the logistics of the matter before Carmilla took the choice out of her hands by jumping. "Or is that like, a tenth anniversary level of dark and troubled past revelation?"

"Maybe I am an old-fashioned kind of girl," she replied, tightening her grip around Danny's neck to give her some warning before she jumped forward, knowing perfectly well that Danny would catch her. "Nice catch, Red."

Danny couldn't find it within herself to be annoyed even as she reshuffled Carmilla's weight between her suddenly burdened arms. "We agreed you would stop doing that," she complained through a giddy smile.

"I don't recall agreeing to that, so clearly it never happened," argued Carmilla, pulling herself up to kiss her lover to silence any further dissent from Danny.

Of course, walking up stairs while carrying your vampire is a challenge in and of itself, doing it with your eyes closed is just begging for something to go horribly wrong. Thankfully for one Danny Lawrence, she wasn't only marrying a overgrown house cat, but a thoroughly non-tradition girl with almost no overly romantic notions surrounding marriage as well.

"Danny, stop before you run Carmilla's head into the doorway," came Laura's amused voice from just inside their new home. "Are you seriously carrying her across-?"

"Sorry Hollis, that's above my pay grade and you will have to take your questions and comments up with HR," Danny interrupted, barely pulling her lips from Carmilla's. She didn't break stride and carefully raised her arm until Carmilla's head was clear of the doorway she was about to receive one unpleasant headache from. Carmilla dealt with Laura far faster, choosing to flip her off.

"HR is mean," Laura pointed out, backing away from the door. Neither of them were paying her incredulity any attention. "Did you go and ask my father's permission to marry me too?"

Danny, carefully and slowly, set Carmilla back on her feet and shut the heavy door with her foot so she could recapture her vampire's lips. She wondered how long it would take for Laura to resent being ignored. Danny gave it another thirty seconds, which Carmilla would call unreasonably generous.

"Oh God, you both went," concluded Laura when neither of them denied it. "We need to go back to the tattoo place, I need to add 'including any weird crap the two of you pull on me' to my vows."

That got their attention, two sets of eyes, one glaring while the other widened with panic, snapped to her immediately. The rush of power wasn't exactly terrible. "Why?" Laura couldn't stop her amused grin as the two of them spoke at the same time.

"You have the most permanent wedding ring we could find short of magic," she shifted her focus from Carmilla to Danny, "and you are taking someone else's name. Then you're both doing that with the carrying and why is that even a thing people do?"

Carmilla leaned back into Danny, enjoying the warmth of the arms that wrapped around her automatically and the speculative nosing against her neck. "Real answer or my reasons?"

Danny officially checked out of the conversation, deciding there was far more important work to be done in the second of at least three wedding night celebrations department than the clashing ideas about what is and is not weird department. It was a tough job, but someone had to do it.

"I have no desire to know why it's a thing people do. I want to know why it's a thing you not only did but have reasons for doing. Reasons, plural," Laura repeated when Carmilla's eyes glazed over for a moment. "Hands where I can see them, Lawrence."

Danny grumbled but removed her hands from underneath Carmilla's clothing anyway. Laura nearly burned alive from the glare Carmilla sent her way.

"You did not spend a week with her going full on knight in shining armour on you, it stays with you," Carmilla started to explain, tilting her head to give Danny better access while Laura slowly lost her grip on what exactly she was interrogating them over. "And I like it."

Danny's awareness of the words being said took a few seconds to catch up with her understanding of what said words meant. When it did catch up, Carmilla was out one set of teeth biting that really sensitive spot directly over her jugular vein. "Really?"

Carmilla twisted to catch the confused frown on Danny's face, "what were you expecting me to say?"

"Don't know, not that," Danny answered before shrugging and resuming her important work. This snapped Laura out of her daily girlfriend-staring session.

Laura's hands rose to cover her own eyes. "How long have you been playing Swooning Princess with Danny?"

Carmilla generally admired Laura's insatiable curiosity and the ravenous way she went after secrets or mysteries. Not so much the way she could make anything sound much worse than it actually was with a few carefully chosen words.

"Swooning Princess involves a tower and a dragon, obviously," Carmilla corrected. She grabbed Danny's hands to stop them from disappearing again, and immediately declared herself insane. Laura too. "This is more: 'my girlfriend works out and hello biceps'."

Danny forced Carmilla's feet forward with gentle pressure on her heels in turn. Carmilla got the message and let herself be led most of the way to Laura. Danny pulled herself from Carmilla long enough to set Laura was a seriously hard look.

"Two options," Danny began, tone leaving exactly zero room for either of them to argue. Laura and Carmilla froze, this particular side of Danny only ever came out when they were individually alone with her, never together. "You can stay here getting worked up over nothing or," Danny paused to turn Carmilla around by her hips then ducked down, standing with a stunned vampire slung over one shoulder, "you can follow me and play Make The Countess Pass Out until we never have to have this discussion again."

With that, Danny ventured further into the house.

Laura blinked twice, then followed as fast as her legs would take her.


	3. The Danger Faced

 

**ONE**

 

 

 

Nothing was on fire. No one was dying or being possessed. There was peace at Silas for at least the next twenty-four hours and Laura Hollis was going to take advantage of every last one of them.

She was alive and her girlfriend was as alive as a vampire could be, and that was all the information Laura needed to get right down to planning. Anything was better than unending demi-gods and clans of who knew what trying to kill them and everyone else on campus, and after saving the school twice now, Laura declared that they deserved a night off.

Perry and LaFontaine had scrammed immediately after Laura’s declaration, leaving Carmilla smirking and Laura wondering what they could possibly be so excited to do.

Carmilla didn’t tell her, so Laura presumed they were off to find a rare door that locked at Silas.

Laura read a fucking book in old English and spent a cringe-worthy amount of time on the Internet before proposing her idea to Carmilla, and even then she spent an hour and a half on the phone to Danny worrying her concerns out with the older woman. Laura completely missed the strain in Danny’s voice as she did her best to give Laura solid romantic advice, and she had to throw the phone away more than once when Carmilla suddenly appeared in whichever room Laura was using as a hiding spot that particular day.

Hand-crafting a note to her girlfriend, she left it on her own pillow for Carmilla to see when she finally awoke in the mid to late morning. Laura then set about running around the campus and the village that had sprung up next to it, getting everything booked and bought and ready for her first real date with her girlfriend. Sex on top of their dorm building did not count in the slightest, to Carmilla at least. Laura was perfectly fine with it but was excited to please her first potentially serious girlfriend hence the plan.

Laura fluttered around the newly revitalised journalism building. Home to the few brave students who were willing to enter into the site of no less than seventeen full-staff massacres over the lifetime of Silas University. Though she considered this building, her third home, for the location of their first official date, but dashed the thought in her mind as soon as it appeared. Carmilla didn’t need Laura adding to the weight of her past by piling on memories. Besides, it was creepy in there at night.

The night was going to be simple, she’d gone so far as to enlist Danny in her plan in a slightly more than advisory role. Turning the other woman’s advice on her to convince her that helping would lead to the best possible outcome, Laura had begged her to make her up a picnic basket. Left alone, Laura would probably poison them both while giving herself sudden onset tooth decay, so Danny had reluctantly stepped in. Then she suggested the perfect location, and Laura really needed to get Danny a fruit basket or something to thank her for all of her help.

Nerves rattled around her body. Grabbing the basket, slipping the note from Danny into her back pocket, she set off towards the room she shared with her girlfriend.

Step one of the plan, pick Carmilla up at her room. Try to be charming? Hopefully be charming.

Smile a lot and kiss her a bunch, she liked that sort of thing.

Carmilla opened the door slowly to Laura’s overeager knocking. There was a bow-tie. Of course Laura would think a bow-tie was appropriate for this situation. Oh well.

“Are we going through the woods to grandma’s house?” Carmilla questioned, making Laura immediately regret choosing her red blazer. “Or is Yogi Bear going to attack us?”

Laura rolled her eyes and offered an arm for her insufferable girlfriend to take. “Is that all the picnic-related comedy you have, or should I wait?”

Carmilla took her arm with a smirk. “Done for now, can’t wait to be mauled by a bear,” she teased, swinging her hips as they left the building and set off for the clock tower in the exact middle of campus. Carmilla raised her eyebrows in question at Laura, “you don’t like those kinds of heights, Cupcake.”

Laura took a deep breath in and held it until the bravery flowed into her entire body. She pulled on her arm and guided Carmilla towards the building, ignoring the cold sweat trickling down her spine. There was something in the old English book about facing dangerous situations and she figured Carmilla would appreciate it if she didn’t find something they agreed was a danger to face and conquer. Heights would be a decent enough start.

“Do you want a picnic as close to night sky as possible, or are you going to keep on being Miss Snarky Pants?” Laura skipped in the middle of her step, joy invading her thundering chest when Carmilla stumbled nearly imperceptibly. “Because we can just go back to the room and do stuff if you’re going to be like that.”

Carmilla’s attention snapped to Laura, “now let’s not get hasty. You’ve put some work into this and I would just hate for Little Red Riding Hood to not deliver her goodies on time.”

“I can’t tell if that means you want to skip the date part of the date or not?” Laura was genuinely confused, and for once it had nothing to do with whatever gauzy material Carmilla had draped herself in today. “Because I have a personal guarantee that we will not be disturbed up there.”

Carmilla’s eyes followed Laura’s pointed finger, taking in the striking figure of the clock tower in the moonlight. Wisely, she didn’t ask whose personal guarantee Laura had secured, knowing that she probably didn’t want to know. “Are you going to keep wearing the bow-tie the whole time?”

Laura flushed and resisted the urge to straighten the fabric around her neck. “You don’t like it?”

"It's cute," Carmilla easily evaded the question, and knew immediately that it wasn't the right word to use under any circumstances. Children were cute, Laura Hollis was not cute and will give you a lecture explaining exactly why she wasn't cute. "Dashing? Charming?"

Laura let the frown slip from her lips, placated for the moment. "Not what I was going for but I'll take it."

The door to the clock tower opened without the need for force. Carmilla clamped down on the part of her brain that was desperately telling her there was no way the baker and the biologist would be behind helping Laura set this up. Which left exactly two options in Laura's limited friendship group, one who wouldn't have the presence of mind to pull off breaking and entering then bouncer duty, and the other Carmilla did her best to pretend didn't exist in Laura's life. The day to day process of dating Laura Hollis went much easier if she convinced herself the giant was dead and gone and no longer a threat to her relationship just crawling out of infancy.

"What were you going for?" Carmilla asked to shift her thoughts away from Danny fucking Lawrence and the danger she presented to Carmilla's very life. If anyone was going to convince Laura that staying with Carmilla wasn't the best idea in the world, it would the the goddamn white knight. Red would probably find herself an actual horse to ride up on and the inner hopeless romantic in Laura would leave dark and brooding for bright and righteous. "Tenured professor?"

Laura went uncharacteristically quiet, and Carmilla took more time that she should have to figure out that it was their slow progress up the stairs rather than anything Carmilla herself had said or done that was causing the silence.

"Laura?"

Laura flinched, and drew her arm away from Carmilla's, shifting the picnic basket between her hands and letting it hang between them. A barrier between her loss of control and her girlfriend. Carmilla pictured every oil painting and opera performance she'd taken in concerning the nature and dangers of pride. Laura was due for a fall, and Carmilla didn't know how to stop it from happening. Little Hollis had done her best to take the damages caused by her own (Carmilla thought to herself, never, ever willing to say it out loud) slight saving people fixation after Carmilla nearly died in the crater.

"I can handle it," Laura snarled from behind clenched teeth. The determination set on her features convinced Carmilla that the fall she was expecting was still coming, and tonight would need a more positive approach to keeping Laura from imploding. "It's not going to win."

Carmilla dug her hands into the barely-there pockets of her pants, biting her lip to stop from arguing and wishing she knew how to stop Laura causing herself distress, or at least a decent explanation as to why she was doing it in the first place.

They skipped the date part of the date. Carmilla dealt with a despondent girlfriend and the lingering scent of Christmas in their room for a solid week.

 

 

* * *

 

 

**TWO**

 

  
Carmilla remembered a time when romance was like a hunt to her, all about the chase and the pumping of blood through her targets. Only one person in her many decades of being the walking dead knew of her supernatural nature, and she was swiftly punished for her failings in the entire situation. She would get close to her prey, make them comfortable with her presence, and then she would strike. Then it would be over, she would save the girl without Mother knowing, or the girl would be taken. Life was absurdly simple.

The constants in her life were pulled out from underneath her by some silly freshman and her dogged pursuit of a mystery, of just one person taken. Taking on Mother and succeeding barely had time to settle before little Laura Hollis pushed further and demanded an end to the demi-god that had long since been relatively dormant. Carmilla was dragged along to both fights, not exactly thinking with her brain for the first, and a one-time urge to stay and protect and care re-emerging after more than a century.

Then another came to stand next to Laura, efficiently turning hunter into hunted with determined blue eyes and a hand wrapped tightly around her neck. Two points of light in the dark, pulling her along and inspiring a contentment all new and more than a little terrifying.

Two years later, and the vampire was facing something she knew was impossible and yet there it was, a single grey hair.

Carmilla walked out of the bathroom in their little not-apartment, and stumbled three full steps towards the couch she was lazing the afternoon away on. She turned and used a burst of superhuman speed to recheck herself in the mirror. If ever there was a time to believe in miracles, it was now. At the time of this discovery she was alone and without either of her girlfriends' around to witness the absolute panic she was sent into.

Upon confirmation of the offending strand, Carmilla was slammed with her earliest memories. Her mother, her biological mother, not Mother, with grey hair making her shine in the moonlight. Carmilla distinctly remembered her mother telling her that she was such a handful that she was causing premature aging in her parents. Father had little to no hair. Looking back, Carmilla struggled to find another like this one growing in after Mother.

She came up with nothing.

The not-apartment her and Laura currently inhabited after their original dorm room proved itself woefully open to attack from even the students at Silas was silent as Carmilla walked aimlessly around. Then she felt a familiar weight settle upon her chest and forced herself to stay still for more than a few seconds. There was an explanation for her sudden burst of aging, and it was going to make rational sense and Carmilla didn't have to face it alone.

Danny, the driving force behind their change of accommodations for reasons neither Carmilla nor Laura totally believed, sweet and earnest Danny would be coming over to keep Carmilla company in a few minutes. Carmilla told herself that was why she was inspecting her appearance in the bathroom mirror in the first place and that Danny had come to her with her insane story about being stuck in a time loop for several months so she would be open to hearing the latest of the Silas University patented curve-balls.

Carmilla made it to the second-hand couch just in time for a set of key to start jingling against the door. She debated with herself for a moment, and decided that yanking the offending strand of hair out would give her the best control over the situation.

The door swung open and Carmilla's heart fell and lurched forward. The red hair and long body sweating and exhausted from a mid-morning run that she was expecting did not appear. Instead it was basically the opposite of that. Short, dark blonde, excited, and bundled up in a jacket Carmilla swore was hers initially.

"Hey," she breathed out, trying to keep the shock and disappointment from her voice. Then she considered how telling Laura about the grey hair and its potential significance would go. Laura didn't give her much of a chance.

"Carm! You're here," Laura seemed to deflate before Carmilla's eyes. "Why are you here?"

"I live here, why are you here?" Carmilla clenched her fist around the hair, Laura's sudden cagey demeanour banishing the idea that this was the right time. She would bring it up when Danny was there too, in the interest of not keeping something potentially this important from one or the other. Not a delaying tactic to give herself more time to convince herself that not telling anyone about the grey hair was the best idea.

Laura transferred the canvas bag she was holding between her hands, tossing her keys on the little table dented with the long-term effects of having metals thrown at it from two wildly different heights daily. Carmilla didn't do keys. "I also live here."

They stared at each other in a confused stalemate. Carmilla wondered how exactly Laura had missed Danny on her running route around this part of Silas and she could only guess why Laura wasn't clear that Carmilla intended to be home all day. This led her to conclude that Laura didn't want either of her girlfriends' knowing whatever was in the bag and that she potentially did see Danny on her way back to the not-apartment.

"Would you be interested in not being here for an hour or so?" Laura edged her way into their modest kitchen, moving the bag behind her back as she went. "For example, there's a very attractive woman downstairs that would be delighted if you went and bought her one of those monstrosities she calls a drink?"

The war to get Laura Hollis to eat like a regular human was a pitched battle that Carmilla gave another six months. Eventually, Laura's stubborn streak was bound to outweigh Danny's.

"Why are you trying to get rid of me?" Carmilla felt the offending hair burning inside her hand and brushed her previous panic aside. "Hot date you don't want me around for?"

Laura flushed red, head ducking in a bashful gesture. Carmilla's heart leaped forward, affection blooming and drowning out her panic and worry. "I want to try something and I can't if either of you are here," Laura answered, keenly avoiding Carmilla's eyes. The vampire caught wind of the raw meat and familiar vegetables in the not quite sealed canvas bag.

Carmilla hated being wrong. The vegetables were being brought in willingly by Laura which meant that Danny won, for at least today. "Is it poisoning Danny with root vegetables to turn her off them for the immediate future?"

Laura blushed, "one bout of food poisoning, and you're trying to kill people every time you go near a kitchen," she whined, causing Carmilla to snort. The entire Dimwit Squad taken down in one night and the culprit was one of their own. Carmilla's blood diet had never been quite so satisfying until Laura Hollis decided she could cook chicken without it going horribly wrong.

"LaFontaine did some testing on the leftovers, you could have sent everyone to the hospital," Carmilla argued softly, rising to stand in front of her girlfriend. "I am not built to visit you both in hospital, so you had better cook that until it's so far beyond well done that it can be used as charcoal."

"Perry ran me through what various meats look like when cooked, I think I'm much better prepared this time around," Laura boasted, a hesitance confidence reaching her voice. "You just happen to be very distracting and Danny back-seat cooks, I kind of need the place to myself to make sure I do this right."

Carmilla watched her shoulders slump, bringing her own arms around Laura's shoulder to pull her into a hug. Laura melted into the embrace, letting the canvas bag drop to the ground and nuzzling into Carmilla's hair as it flowed around her neck. "How long do Red and I need to be gone for?"

Laura held on tighter in thanks. Carmilla resolved to keep at least part of her attention on the not-apartment for the entire time she was gone. Surely she could hear whatever catastrophic accident Laura was bound to have when left alone near open flames and be there to help in the blink of an eye. All she had to do was convince Danny to stick close-by their building, that new cafe/juice bar/bookshop/blacksmith across the street should keep them both busy until Laura was ready.

"I will do everything in my power to not set the place on fire or stab myself while you're gone," Laura vowed though she didn't exactly let Carmilla go. The vampire was stunned by the admission that she might need some kind of help from her girlfriends'. Laura wasn't generally keen on Danny or Carmilla coming to her rescue unless it was life-threatening, and even then there was always an annoyed look Laura got. "Come running if there's screaming?"

Carmilla's mind blanked, and she suddenly knew exactly what her and Danny were going to do with an hour alone together. Figuring out the strange little Cupcake was basically a sport to them at this point, and rather annoyingly it was a sport only LaFontaine could play effortlessly. Carmilla and Danny tried their best to not be insanely jealous over the close bond the two of them fell into easily.

"And if there's smoke?" Carmilla tested the limits of Laura's sudden co-dependent streak. Not that asking for help when needed was co-dependant to regular people, for Laura Hollis it was downright clingy. "Or flooding? Flooding is a real possibility here."

Laura groaned out her embarrassment even as lifted her into a proper bear hug to take any sting out of her words. "Only if the flooding is Biblical in magnitude," Laura qualified as she pulled back from Carmilla's iron-strong grip, "and if it's a small fire, you will let me deal with it."

"You just want me to run interference with Xena because you know her pouting doesn't work on me," Carmilla accused, dropping Laura unceremoniously back onto her feet. She sighed heavily, "I guess that's just my cross to bear."

"Oh it does to work on you, I've seen the Hunter and Prey scoreboard and there's no way Danny's that close to you unless you're not trying as hard as you could," Laura goaded, her eyes alight with teasing. "You go deal with Danny's post-run high and I will brave the room that might get all of us killed."

If Laura noticed that Carmilla's hand remained clenched in a fist until she was edging her way out of the not-apartment, she didn't say anything. Carmilla stopped in the doorway to observe Laura entering the kitchen, immediately setting her face to false-confidence and pulling out the tools of Danny's unofficial trade.

"Off you go, don't come back unless Danny passes out or I've set the whole place on fire," ordered Laura when Carmilla lingered for longer than she deemed acceptable.

Carmilla bounded down the stairs and shoved the grey hair into her pocked for a better time to tell them.

 

 

* * *

 

 

**THREE**

 

 

 

Danny waited for them in the tattoo parlour, sipping on a green monstrosity that she would call a ‘smoothie’ or ‘drinkable’ but turned Laura’s stomach at the sight of the evil liquid. It was so pulpy and she honestly had no clue how her soon-to-be wife managed to choke it down every single day. Danny’s eyes flashed around the room, still taking in everything and failing to notice her companion’s arriving.

Carmilla would blush if she could as Laura ducked ahead as per usual to open the door for her. Laura beamed at her, placing a guiding hand on her lower back as they crept slowly up behind Danny’s oblivious form. Carmilla broke away to jump at Danny’s left side while Laura took the right.

The customers of the shop, despite the sleepy nature of their town, stopped to stare at the group of giggling women. The elderly man having his Navy tattoo retouched admonished the plague that was the youth of the world while the owner knew for a fact that she was making a sizable sale off of three giddy, possibly drunken idiots. Her assistant came bursting out of the back room to greet the shortest woman, who was truly tiny, by name. It wasn’t often they got drunken appointment-makers but there was a first time for everything.

“Miss Hollis, you are early but in luck!”

Danny sized the man up, swiftly concluding that she could beat the tar out of him if he was anything but perfectly careful with Laura. Carmilla was still standing up from having to dive for Danny’s drink when her giant startled just that little bit too hard. Laura bounced up and down, the man’s eyes watching his customer’s energy rise and rise until she was nearly bursting. Thankfully, one of the other women placed a hand on her shoulder to stop the movements.

“Sweetie, you’re going to have to be still for a long time,” the dark-haired woman reminded her with a voice that he considered kind of inappropriate outside of a bedroom. Her fingers dipped below the thin shirt Miss Laura Hollis wore for her first tattoo. To his knowledge, this one was significantly larger and in a much more sensitive area than most people generally have their first done. The majestically tall woman accompanying the obvious couple scoffed.

“Do you need to go for a jog, darling?” He did a double-take as subtly as possible. Miss Hollis glared up at the ginger woman, though it must have hurt her neck to do so given how close they were standing. Miss Hollis was even tinier up close. “Don’t you look at me like that!”

“Don’t go suggesting insane things or I will reconsider this whole thing,” she snapped right back. “And you,” she whirled around to face her, other girlfriend? “You will keep your hand to yourself.”

Partners suitably chastised, Miss Hollis turned her attention to him finally. “Hello Miss Hollis, and friends?”

Oh they did not like that. “Do you see why we’re-”

Miss Hollis smacked the tall one in her stomach. “I get it! Still no possessive asshole crap,” she backhanded the other woman in the stomach as well, “from either of you!”

“Ouch,” the one with the dark hair falsely groaned, barely moving at the fairly solid connection. “You wound me.”

Miss Hollis rolled her eyes and turned back to him. “Two sets of wedding vows please, before I change my mind.”

Despite being publicly dressed down for whatever they had done, her two fiances, apparently, brightened immediately and seemed to syphon off Miss Hollis’ energy. Plus side, this calmed his customer down enough that she could now be worked upon. “Of course, right this way!”

The intern they had taken in for on the job training and work experience set to work on getting Miss Hollis prepared while her two significant other's separated to wander around the various beautiful designs they had on display. He couldn't decide which one he wanted to follow with his eyes, the dark one staring at the anguished, angst-ridden section or the ginger shifting as if she wasn't totally comfortable in her own body next to the sign proclaiming that yes, they did do military tattoos.

"Why don't you have any of these already?" His head tilted without his permission, the taller woman had to be talking to him, there was no way her soft words would reach her companion's ears. "It sounds like something that would appeal to the loner philosopher in you."

No, she was absolutely not talking to him. Inhaling deeply, he caught the scent of something coppery in the air and took an educated guess. Geras pulled himself to full height and brushed his salt-and-pepper hair back away from his eyes. It really was getting long, and he really should have dealt with it an age ago.

Helping his guess along, the dark little probable vampire wandered her way over to the giant. Geras searched over her form with an experienced eye, searching for any hint of the abnormal clinging to both of Miss Hollis' partners. He found nothing but resolved to look over his client in greater detail. They were going to move in to the abandoned house on the outskirts of the village, according to the rumour mill, it paid to be aware of the neighbours' little chats in their little social circles.

"You think Mother would let me besmirch my perfect skin like that, Red?"

The vampire's hips swung with a seductive grace Geras knew only came with age and experience. Older vampire then, at least a century, most likely more. The tall one certainly seemed human, no scent of blood rolling off her, no eyes much more experienced than her appearance would lead one to believe. Geras concluded that this one at least wasn't of that nature.

Unless she was a werewolf, that he couldn't quite rule out. Though he only knew of two packs who would come this close to a human settlement, and the woman was too pale by far to be a family member of either.

"Mother," the not-werewolf spat, as if the very word was poisonous to her, "is very dead and if she comes back then we flip a coin to decide who does the heroic sacrificing."

Geras wanted to know more about how a person got that flippant regarding their own potential death. Perhaps Miss Hollis would be a soft nut to crack, tattoos that precise took time. He would have her undivided attention until the small hours of the morning, plenty of opportunity for some innocent questioning.

"Quiet, she might hear you, then whoever loses will be killed horribly anyway," the vampire joked. Well, to the best of his perceptive abilities she was kidding. Geras became all the more enthralled by his customer, and busied himself with going over the printout of the finely drawn words Miss Hollis wanted. Adding to his growing list of conversation topics, why the words were in German when none of them spoke with even the faintest of accents.

"You'd know more about being murdered by Laura than I do." The woman went redder than her hair, which Geras considered an achievement. "And about trying to murder her, now that I really think about it."

That got Stretch riled up, "you killed the horse she was riding. She could have snapped her fucking neck!"

"For the last time, it was the horse or me, Laura's scary when she's armed okay?"

Geras was not a young man, he had seen many things throughout his life, heard all sorts of stories. This was one that he really, truly didn't want to know the details. Because the tiny woman he was about to work on couldn't be threatening if she had an army behind her, and he couldn't have this assumption challenged before he got to meet her properly.

The intern returned and Geras turned him to hover around the pair non-verbally. The boy was more than aware of the gossip-heavy nature of the town, and rolled his eyes.

"Miss Hollis," Geras gently got her attention, "are you ready?"

A brief flash of fear, one Geras saw in everyone but his repeat customers, was followed by the single most determined aura he had ever seen. "Carm, could you two please?"

The vampire was in the doorway with the giant trailing behind her in seconds. Geras re-evaluated Miss Hollis.

They took up posts next to their partner, and stayed standing and lightly concerned for the entire session.

Miss Hollis didn't even flinch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not world building, you're world building!
> 
> It's NaNoWriMo at the moment, which is great for this little universe as it's another long-ass story for me to write.
> 
> In other news, I've got a bunch of drabbles coming out over the next week, so look out for those.


	4. The Possessive Arm

 

 

**ONE**

 

 

 

Laura Hollis didn't belong to anyone. Not her father. Not her girlfriend. Not her other girlfriend. No one.

She didn't want an engagement ring, had never wanted one, and if she did ever get married she certainly wasn't wearing a wedding ring. Visible love bites left a bad taste in her mouth and she barely participated in the great clothing jumble Carmilla and Danny had accidentally started. Laura loved them both to the ends of the universe and back, but she wasn't a thing and she wasn't going to deal with one iota of possessive behaviour.

Human ones, anyway. If Carmilla wanted to rub all over her and make other cats fuck off, then Laura could easily tune that out as one of the many quirks of dating the woman. It didn't affect her unless she caught sight of the campus' many domesticated cats fleeing from her presence.

The woman pacing across the stage of the lecture hall had so many awards, it made Laura's head spin. Her talk on investigative journalism was barely attended, so Laura could convince herself that she was talking to her and her alone. The woman definitely wasn't giving her talk to Danny, who sprawled out in the seat next to her girlfriend and promptly dozed for the remainder of the speech.

Laura didn't hold it against her, not at all. Danny was still recovering from her broken ribs caused by of all things, body swapping between her and Carmilla, and the painkillers had her drowsy almost all the time. Laura and Carmilla, mostly Carmilla, had to guide her through the day because she was basically a newborn animal stumbling on her feet for the first time. Laura would be worried if it wasn't cute.

Danny's feet were propped up on either armrest of the seat in front of her while her right arm curled around her stomach. Her left arm was causing problems with Laura.

It rested no doubt comfortably across the back of Laura's chair, the tips of her fingers playing with the end of Laura's hair even in her sleep. That part was also cute, but it wasn't ideal. She could feel other people thinking it, the words playing on a loop in her own mind. 'Danny Lawrence's Little Girlfriend'. The title screamed at her from all angles, her identity wrapped up in one woman's arm barely slung over her shoulders.

The urge to poke Danny into coherence and demand that she remove the offending limb rose up. Laura forced it down and refocused on the guest lecture she was probably the only one paying attention to anyway.

This lasted all of five minutes. Danny's arm fell off the back of Laura's chair as she shifted her weight restlessly. The warmth of her arm across her lower back was a branding iron, marking her as property of Danny Lawrence, do please fuck off.

Laura gritted her teeth and clutched her pen so hard it cracked. Danny was asleep and wasn't doing it on purpose, no need to get mad. She wouldn't mind if she were woken up, falling asleep in public was never fun. The active fingers searched for a new target, and Laura tried to ignore them. The iron struck on her hip, slipping under her shirt. A pleased sigh, barely audible, came from Danny and she turned her entire body towards Laura.

The woman speaking noticed the movement and gave Laura a knowing smirk. Laura sat a bit straighter, making her taller than Danny for the first time ever. Looking back, she would identify this as the moment her opinion on the subject shifting. Flipping, actually.

Danny's head lolled to rest on Laura's shoulder and she suddenly understood why Carmilla liked it when Laura curled into her side at night. The woman was still locked on to the pair though she didn't break her speech nor her stride. Laura's chin lifted up and she matched the smirk.

Yeah, this one's mine, you got a problem? Laura surprised herself with the force of the thought, but the woman backed off and her girlfriend sighed again, so she considered the tiny battle a wash and gave Danny a pass.

Just this once.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

**TWO**

 

 

 

Danny didn't notice Laura was doing it, she was sure. There was no way Danny would let her get away with this kind of manipulation if she knew it was happening. Though Laura didn't see another explanation, Danny's brain had to have spit out something. For all Carmilla’s mocking, Danny was anything but stupid.

They were stumbling out of the Clockwork Repository Cafe in the small hours of the morning. A late-night book club that Carmilla hated on principal finishing well beyond schedule. They had argued for so long that all the other members had gone home and Laura and Danny were left the keys to the building by the far too trusting owners. It was their place, a building Carmilla refused to go near due to the pungent and constant smell of incense that burned all through the day and night.

More people were out on a Saturday morning than the limited campus security would be happy with. Laura liked the people being out and about at all hours of the day and night. It gave her a sense of security no weapons or violent girlfriends could.

Danny slowed her natural pace to allow Laura's shorter legs a chance to keep up, unthinkingly slinging her arm over Laura's shoulders and tilting her head back to stare at the clear night sky.

Laura let her, and if Danny found anything odd about this, then she wasn't going to complain. People, obviously the ones who had watched Laura explode at first Danny and then eventually Carmilla as well over their respective possessive natures, gaped at Danny's audacity. The parts of the student body in the know knew all about how disastrous the situation could end so more than one brave soul elected to follow the pair as surreptitiously as possible.

Laura felt the weight and let it settle, it was a cold night and people could stare all they wanted. She wasn't going to yell and scream in public so she didn't quite understand why Danny tensed up while they were still in eyesight of the cafe.

"I am going to take my arm back now, please don't break up with me on camera again," she warned and begged with genuine fear in her voice. Laura's heart clutched with guilt. "Or break my ribs, the doctor said they're fine but can't be re-injured for like a year."

The warmth slipped from her shoulders and Laura barely had enough time to react, ducking even lower than she already was. Danny's hand was again level with Laura's head so she grabbed the hand and tugged it back into place. Behind them, the assembled followers burst into whispers and gossip among themselves, neither Laura nor Danny caring to notice them.

"Leave it or lose it," Laura snarled through her teeth. Danny's hand gripped on for dear life, and she made a strangled noise somewhere between a squeak and a groan. "And I would take out a leg first if I was going to fight you."

The night air was pleasant, and their heads cleared as they got away from the noxious fumes of stoner alley. Laura stared down anyone who dared send a questioning glance their way, her shoulders pulled back and squared, ready for a fight if needed. Danny didn't seem to be paying her girlfriend much attention, busy on her phone probably paying her girlfriend some token lip service as Laura noticed they were heading for the Summer Society Hunting Lodge rather than the room Laura and Carmilla shared full time.

Their crowd of onlookers got bored and lost interest after it didn't seem like Hurricane Hollis was going to blow her girlfriend into next week. It was then that Danny decided to be far more observant than Laura gave her credit for, by far the most annoying trait she had.

"You know how I don't let Carmilla go on about 'kicked puppy' this and 'be nice, pet' that?" Danny threw out, startling Laura so much she nearly knocked the precious arm from its perch. She managed to hum her acknowledgement of the question, hoping to prompt Danny further. "What, exactly, makes you think you can get away with treating me like your goddamn lost dog?"

Laura didn't respond verbally, instead grabbing the hand with the thumb teasing the exposed skin above her collarbone and pulled it so Danny's arm was completely wrapped around her. This never happened outside of their bedroom or the couch, definitely not in public. She was coming off a long day of study and classes followed by an even longer night of debating some stupid book she had barely read with a pack of idiots barely half as intelligent as her literary critical genius girlfriend. Laura couldn't find the energy to mince her words or put it kindly, no matter how big the swelling of pride and something she couldn't place was in her chest as Danny had to bend to keep her hold on Laura's body.

"If I wanted a dog, I would fuck a werewolf," she spat, hand sliding up Danny's hand to dig her nails into her wrist. Her girlfriend inhaled through her teeth, making a whistle that was music to Laura's ears. "You are mine, if you hadn't quite noticed. You are hammered, and if you don't hold on to me you're going to fall over."

Carmilla's cat rubbing thing made sense, and her need to be in the middle at night. Beyond the nightmares, that is.

Laura stopped, Danny nearly tripping over her in the process. Danny drummed her fingers over the top of her sternum, drawing attention to the imbalance of power they were at. Laura rolled her eyes and remembered the way one of her heroes had stared at her, daring her to sit back and be owned by some girl's arm. Didn't matter who, or how much she loved her, Laura couldn't abide by it when there was pride to consider.

"That is absolutely true," Danny agreed, again shocking Laura more than she would ever admit. "But I'm not your damn pet, so either explain yourself and get walking back to the dead girl, darling."

At times like these, Carmilla wouldn't speak to either of them, so the threat was empty. The vampire wanted nothing to do with them while they were drunk or even tipsy together. Everything got more intense, both the good and the bad and if the humans wanted to smash into each other at full force then she was going to clear out and come back to pick up the pieces.

"Daddy wants me in a bubble, Carm would propose if I agreed to settle down and back off the problems of the world, and you, Danny love," Laura paused to drag Danny back into motion by her captured arm. "You want to stick a flag in my chest and call me 'New Lawrence'."

Danny opened her mouth to argue, but Laura wasn't going to let her get a word in any time soon.

"Don't try and deny it, it's kind of cute," she mitigated with a gently bump of her hip into the warm body beside her. "But not so much in public, please sweetie? So keep your arm where it is and we won't have a problem, a girl can't like having a girlfriend all over her?"

Danny rolled her eyes so hard that Laura thought she was suddenly seeing the world through Carmilla's eyes for a moment. "I'm getting 'New Hollis' printed on my next track jersey, aren’t I?"

Danny's arm lost whatever support her own muscles were giving and Laura felt the full weight of her giant girlfriend leaning on her own tiny body for a solid foundation. Laura smirked, happy with herself.

"You're damn right you are Lawrence."

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

**THREE**

 

 

At the first sign of shopping Carmilla disappeared in a puff of smoke.

This left Danny and Laura to take the proceeds from the sale of the Dean's estate and spend it in every last store they could find. Petty revenge was not something they were above at this point in their lives.

"Do we need a horrendously over-priced coffee-maker?" Laura called out to Danny as they wandered around the speciality store. Laura was dragged there by her kitchen-happy wife, and was fast running out of things to buy. "It even kind of matches that juicer you're getting for you and you alone."

Laura caught a flash of red hair in the aisle next to hers before it was gone in an excited rush. She folded her arms and waited patiently for Danny to be done with whatever shiny object had caught her attention. It was a frequent problem as the hospitality shop was sponsored by chrome, aluminium, and stainless steel. Danny appeared at the end of the aisle just as Laura was getting fed up with waiting.

"There is no way I'm putting in the time to fix that thing," Danny effectively silenced any further argument for the professional-grade machine. Laura wanted to pout and whine and demand that she was basically running on caffeine now that she had her own business to run, but stopped it as she caught the exhaustion around Danny's eyes. "Maybe one of the automatic ones that self-cleans?"

Laura heard her wife not say that she was leaving in less than two weeks anyway, so they probably shouldn't be buying anything that couldn't be used without Danny their to maintain it. She knew how little Danny was sleeping, tossing and turning while Carmilla snoozed contentedly and Laura faked it to keep watch over her partners.

"So long as there's coffee, I don't really care how it comes into glorious being," she tried to lighten Danny's mood, getting a somewhat false excitable grin for her trouble.

"I know, I'm not great with the reading German, but I'm pretty sure there's something in your vows about providing caffeine at all hours of the day," teased Danny, knowing full well that Laura's black script tattoo was beyond serious in its wording. She ran a hand through her hair, shoulders slumping with an invisible burden. "We should be getting back home soon, or kitty will start clawing the curtains."

Laura raised her eyebrows, "when did the ceasefire end? You guys were going so well."

Danny blinked, then blinked again, her eyes widening as her brain caught up with her own words. She shook her head clear of whatever cobwebs were hanging around. "It didn't, I'm just," Danny trailed off into a vague hand gesture and a shrug.

"Exhausted?" Laura supplied, watching what was left of her shopping-related energy drain out of her wife. "We can go, if you need a nap or some cocoa?"

Laura's bright smile cheered Danny up slightly, doing little to combat the draining rushing through her muscles. "I can't, there's still so much to do before I go."

"You're going to boot camp, not dying," Laura said as she grabbed both of Danny's hands and twisted her own body so she was leaning back into Danny's arms. "We have a stove and a microwave on the way to be installed professionally, Carmilla and I can feed ourselves for six little months."

Despite Laura's light tone and the warmth ballooning through her body, Danny was forced to lean heavily on Laura for support, both physically and emotionally.

"We go give the nice man our address, pay for our very shiny things, then we go get you into bed," Laura laid out the plan. She felt Danny's lack of fight against cutting their outing well short of their intended plan, and started to worry.

Though Carmilla changed her mind every single time it came up, Laura had slowly settled into believing that Danny actually did get stuck in a time loop directly after her graduation from Silas. Laura gradually came to this conclusion by poking and prodding at Danny until she had the full story of the continual verbal murder she had dealt to her then-girlfriend. Laura felt the arguments Danny claimed came from Laura's own mouth sounded so much like her own thoughts and concerns that there was no way Danny was making the whole thing up.

In particular was the biggest problem in the Lawrence-Hollis War for the Future, what exactly their respective life plans were. Essentially, Laura wanted to stay entrenched in the weird and wonderful Styria and while Danny had no problems with staying in the area, she sure as hell wasn't going to continue down the vigilante justice and rogue journalism paths Laura had set them on.

The offer in the mail for Danny came at the best possible time. A way to satisfy them both while not giving too much ground. Carmilla was on the whole to intimidated to do much of anything about supporting or arguing against either of them, so she jumped on the offer almost as fast as Danny.

The reality of it was starting to weigh heavily on Danny's mind, Laura surmised, because as far as the rest of the world was concerned, Danny didn't really have much else to be worried about.

"I'm not having a freaking nap, Laura," Danny tried to argue. She cut whatever she was going to say next off with a yawn. "Shut up."

Laura pulled them both forward, taking her captured partner with her as she refused to relinquish her hold on Danny's arms. "You need rest. You aren't a machine, Hollis."

Danny managed to frown and brighten simultaneously, sending Laura cross-eyed and confused as she twisted her neck to get a decent look at her wife. Danny responded by bearing down harder on Laura's shoulders until her tiny partner was practically carrying her. "I kind of need to be a machine starting real soon."

Laura got through the process of organising and paying for delivery with Danny slumped against her, a process that the nice gentleman running the store met with an approving smile. Though he did seem to worry that Danny might have been crushing Laura with her superior height. Laura didn't have Danny's upper body strength, but her core was solid and her legs probably wouldn't give way before they reached the car.

The car that Laura was going to have to drive home. Which meant the mildly humiliating process of repositioning the driver's seat from one extreme to the other. Hopefully Danny would fall asleep immediately and she would be spared the embarrassment.

Danny reluctantly removed herself from Laura, the frown returning as her legs suddenly had to do their own work again. Laura had the car unlocked just in time for Danny to hit her head on the roof of the car while getting in. Laura stifled a giggle at not only the incident but the canine whining sound Danny made as she rubbed at the point of connection with great confusion.

"Are you okay?" Laura asked once she got herself settled. Danny was too concerned with fighting her own lethargy to notice just how far forward Laura had to bring her seat before she could reach the pedals. Then Danny got distracted with wondering why her own legroom was in such short supply. "Or is your head bleeding?"

"I'm fine," grumbled Danny, slouching in her seat as much as she could. Laura reached over blindly to take one of Danny's hands in her own.

"I can see that, are you going to at least rest when we get home?" Laura liked the warm, fuzzy feeling she got when she thought of the house that no doubt had a vampire bouncing of the walls inside of it. Danny was quiet for so long that Laura thought she had gone to sleep.

Smiling to herself at a job well done, Laura allowed Danny her nap, however brief, and didn't look over to her wife until she was pulling up next to their garage. Danny wasn't so much asleep as she was staring off into nothing as if in a trance. Danny didn't react to the car stopping, nor did she even jump as Laura opened her door. Laura bit her bottom lip, considering her options.

She decided that the physical route was called for. Laura dashed around the car, waving off Carmilla when she appeared at their side-door, and gently, slowly, opened the door for Danny. Danny blinked when the glass she was leaning against was suddenly not there any more, staring up at Laura with a hazy expression.

"Hey there, Army Girl, you joining us on the ground any time soon?"

Laura held out her hand for her wife to take, smiling uneasily up at Carmilla. The vampire went back inside the house, in search of anything to help even though she didn't know what was wrong exactly.

"I don't want to leave you both," Danny whispered just loud enough for Laura to hear. "It's six whole months and we only just got settled."

Laura wouldn't lie and say it didn't bring forward a longing she thought was silenced for good. "If you think you're going the entire time without Carmilla sneaking onto the damn base, you clearly need to get some sleep."

Laura let Danny lean all over her again, allowing her wife to take whatever strength she needed. Carmilla would no doubt be setting out their impressive initial collection of local take-out menus in preparation for the functioning adult among them being out of commission.

Laura was going to starve to death or have a heart attack before Danny got back from boot camp.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uh comment if you liked it I guess?
> 
> Never know what to say here.


	5. The Freezing Cold

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to the increasingly vaguely connected collections of three drabble-length things.

 

 

**ONE**

 

 

 

 

Laura Hollis was a sensible dresser.

Usually.

When a girl's vampire girlfriend deigns to go on an actual date that involved going out in public and normal social behaviours, one does not dress sensible. Light layers and comfortable shoes weren't an option when Carmilla took her out for dinner or a play that wasn't in English. Sensible went out the window and common sense went right along with it.

Which led to awkward situations such as being woefully unprepared for really obvious and totally foreseeable problems.

"Are you alright?" Carmilla asked for the seventh time in the last twenty minutes. Laura could really feel the teasing in her voice. It struck down to the tips of her toes, setting her face ablaze yet again. "You don't seem alright."

There were downsides to dating Carmilla. Danny would get tired of teasing her, Carmilla kept going until Laura exploded. Like she was doing now, getting underneath Laura's skin and leveraging the discomfort out into the open. Oh, she didn't do it explicitly, that would be too kind. Carmilla provoked her by playing the role of the doting girlfriend. 'Are you hungry, sweetie?' Laura hated that one, always following behind any kind of forlorn glance towards their mini-fridge Laura made. Constantly wanting to cuddle when Laura was vibrating with caffeinated energy she'd consumed far too late in the day. There was no doubt in Laura's mind that her girlfriend knew exactly what she was doing.

Laura couldn't stop her body from shivering. It tended to happen when one forewent a coat on a late night date.

It was such a warm evening when they left their room, Laura didn’t even feel the gentle chill of the breeze that brushed her skin on the way to the restaurant. In the short walk to the theatre, she felt the cold wash over her, but the theatre was close and Carmilla was cuddled into her so it was a short-lived discomfort. Now they were walking home, and Laura was starting to lose feeling in her fingers.

“Is there anything I can do, sweetie?” Carmilla’s saccharine voice pierced Laura’s constant mental loop between cold, freezing and embarrassment. She reached out and intertwined their fingers, causing Laura to snap out of her downward spiral of self-punishment and self-loathing. Carmilla’s hand was warm, though she could barely feel it. “Your hand sure is cold, Cupcake, are you sure you’re alright?”

Laura viciously bit into her own lip, glaring at her girlfriend out of the corner of her eye. Carmilla didn’t seem not notice, and swung their joined hands in between the space between them merrily and without a single care to Laura’s fairly urgent problem. She really wasn’t interested in losing a few fingers or potentially gaining some fun hypothermia for the sake of pride. Laura Hollis would sort of cheat on her girlfriend and admit it to her face, but she wouldn’t abide by sharing that she needed help warming herself. Pride slammed into the cold and they wrestled in her mind for supremacy.

Eventually, Laura sighed and squeezed Carmilla’s hand to concede her defeat.

“Yes?” Carmilla’s smug smirk made Laura want to get to that conversation about the looming Danny Lawrence shaped problem standing over their relationship. That would shut Carmilla up for the rest of the night and Laura could have some peace in her own set of stupid decisions. “Can I help you, dearest girlfriend?”

Oh yeah, Carmilla could say she was okay with sharing Laura, but it obviously cut her more than she was confessing. They would totally need to re-discuss the issue later. “I’m cold, you ass.”

Carmilla, defying every last experience Laura had ever had with her, didn’t laugh or even continue with her smirking. Hell, the smug satisfaction all over her face disappeared too. Laura stared at her, trying to figure out the sudden source of a good nature inside Carmilla. Her eyes widened as Carmilla pulled her hand away and shrugged out of her leather jacket.

Laura’s jaw dropped open when Carmilla held the jacket up for Laura to slip her arms into, basically the complete opposite of the barrage of teasing and taunting Laura was fully braced for from her girlfriend. “Are you sick?”

Carmilla frowned, holding the jacket out more insistently. “Cold or not?”

Laura slipped her arms into the jacket’s warmth, savouring the previously distant feeling and scent of Carmilla clinging to it. “Thank you?”

“Why is that a question?” Carmilla full-on pouted now, folding her now bare arms in dismay. “I can’t do something nice for my girlfriend?”

They were having such a nice night too, all ruined because Laura didn’t bring her damn coat.

“It’s not very,” Laura paused to regret her word choice, though she did nothing to change it, “you.”

Carmilla’s jaw tensed, distracting Laura momentarily. “I want to be nice for once, and you’re cold. We’re being practical.”

She grabbed Laura’s hand and began to storm off toward home, dragging Laura along with her. Laura had some time to consider the motivations behind Carmilla giving up her stylish jacket and relinquishing a prime Laura-taunting opportunity that would usually continue until Laura stopped it. She didn’t believe for one second that Carmilla had decided to have a sudden bout of niceness. It took most of the way back to their room, but Laura figured it out.

Laura disentangled their hands to open the door to their building for Carmilla, her hand automatically going to the small of her girlfriend’s back to guide her unnecessarily through it. She leaned in close when Carmilla passed in front of her and whispered, “you know you don’t have to compete with Danny, right?”

Carmilla’s entire body stiffened, her hair whipping Laura in the face as she turned to glare at her. “I do not need to compete with Fido,” she seethed, her hands curling in on themselves while her nails bit into her own flesh. “Why the hell would you think that?”

Laura raised her arms to indicate the leather jacket. Though the woman had never done it, Laura admittedly could very clearly picture Danny draping her letterman jacket over Laura’s shoulders if she was cold out on a date. Never in a million years would she imagine Carmilla doing the same. It wasn’t a bad thing, they were different people, and Laura cared deeply for them both because of how different they were. Danny wouldn’t take her to French theatre, mostly because she would fall asleep, and Carmilla wouldn’t do stupid sweet little things like giving Laura her jacket.

Different. Equal, but different.

“Thank you for this,” Laura tugged on the collar of the leather jacket, unable to stop a stupid goofy grin from spreading across her face at the feeling of being surrounded by Carmilla, “but you don’t have to do stuff like this. Danny’s got the knight in shining armour thing down, you just need to be you. I really, really like you the way you are, and I can take some teasing if I fuck up!”

Carmilla relaxed, leaning back into Laura as they started the long climb up to their room. Carmilla moved in closer to press her lips to Laura’s ear. “Maybe I like how you look in my clothes.”

Laura’s feet moved faster without her permission. They couldn’t get to their room fast enough, especially if Carmilla was going to take that tone with her. Carmilla’s lips were on her neck, pride surging through Laura at the navigational trust Carmilla was placing in her. “Maybe. But you aren’t allowed to take pictures and send them to Danny for whatever bullshit justification you’re cooking up in that pretty little head of yours.”

Carmilla groaned.

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

**TWO**

 

 

 

 

Human beings were not designed to rise with the sun, vampires especially weren’t.

Humans and vampires with an athletic girlfriend who occasionally woke up pre-dawn to work out however could be convinced to go against nature’s intentions, and outside too!

“The view isn’t that good,” Carmilla grumbled, sliding further down the bleachers and picking at the pack of baked goods Perry dropped off the previous night after she found out about their morning plans. “And all manner of beasties and creepy crawlies could still be roaming the campus.”

Laura rolled her eyes at Carmilla’s complaining, especially since this whole thing was quietly her idea. “She says like she isn’t going to eat Danny for breakfast the minute she stops,” Laura taunted, wrapping her arms around herself. The morning air bit through her layers, and the mist still settling over the athletics field caught in her chest. “Are you going to stop moaning and get over here already? It’s cold.”

Carmilla raised an eyebrow at Laura’s whining tone, combined with her pouting it did not give off an especially attractive picture no matter how cute Laura made it. She glanced toward her other girlfriend on the field, currently stretching out her impossibly long legs, and was instantly warmed by the pleasant view. Carmilla slid slowly along the bench, bringing her closer to Laura.

“Do we have an attack plan for when she’s done?” Carmilla purred, sliding an arm around Laura’s waist. “Or are we just ambushing her in the shower? I don’t care as long as that,” she gazed appreciatively over Danny’s form, she had started her jogging and it was delightful, “is mine by noon.”

“Then kitty has a nap?” Laura challenged, grating on Carmilla’s more possessive tendencies. Her hand forced its way inside Carmilla’s jacket and stroked her side over her flimsy shirt. Thankfully, Laura had gotten excellent at ignoring the evidence of Carmilla’s nighttime hunting. The dried blood was an issue of contention for weeks before Laura found a way to deal with it. “What if she’s tired?”

Laura’s teasing, asking Carmilla to snap at her out of sheer sexual frustration, was undercut by the shivering her body was doing. Clearly Laura wasn’t giving it permission to do that, if she even noticed in the first place. Carmilla could also tell that Laura wasn’t exactly wearing a bra, and she was briefly distracted by memories of Laura throwing on whatever shirt she found first less than an hour ago.

Laura would not be winning.

“Then we be amazing girlfriends and rub down her poor, weary, and overworked body until she melts in our hands,” Carmilla explained with her very best seduction eyes pinned to Laura. Danny she would work on later, for now Laura needed some attention. She was still shivering, probably still hadn’t noticed either.

“Because we’re so nice?” Laura questioned with a smirk. “What if she’s too exhausted for it and we’ve woken up this early for nothing?”

Carmilla stuffed a scone into her mouth and flicked Laura on her bright red and freezing nose. “Same thing, less melting, more relaxation. Obviously, Cupcake.”

Laura blushed, finally taking in Danny as she started her wind sprints. “Fuck she can really get moving, can’t she?”

Carmilla accepted the diversion in their conversation, enjoying the spectator sport she and Laura woke with Danny to engage in. Though Danny took significantly less time to get ready and she refused to wait around for them to be ready. Then there was the upcoming disapproval at them both eating sugar filled treats while Danny pushed herself through a gruelling workout to look forward to. Some leering was in order.

“Potential for exhaustion, Laura, try to remember that please?” Carmilla gently reminded, Laura could get unreasonably pissed off if she was left figuratively high and dry, and Danny didn’t deserve that after what looked like a fairly intense workout. “Don’t be a dick if she’s too tired for us to play with.”

Laura went a brighter shade of red, removing her hand from Carmilla’s body and wrapping it back around herself. “I will be perfectly reasonable if Danny needs to relax after this really, really impressive show.”

“I was not aware people could sprint for that long,” Carmilla agreed, allowing herself to be mesmerised right along with Laura. “I think I read somewhere that ‘runner’s high’ is totally a thing?”

Laura grunted. “We are going to end up like damn animals in the shower while she rests, aren’t we?”

Laura’s teeth chattered between her words, though Carmilla could barely feel the cold and the dampness of the morning. “Do you want my coat?”

Carmilla, unlike Laura, had been up all night rather than rising early in the morning and therefore put more than ten seconds of thought into her outfit for the morning. She also didn’t view said clothes as a temporary measure to bide time until they could attack Danny and take full advantage of the rare day all three of them had without commitments elsewhere.

Laura eyed her overcoat with a jealous interest, especially since the vampire had the foresight to wear a sweater and a jacket in addition to her coat.

“Perhaps I might,” Laura said, her voice dancing around the hit to her usual preparedness. “What would it cost me?”

Carmilla wasn’t going to ask for anything in return, but if Laura was offering then who was she to deny her expectations.

“Round One,” she started, sidling impossibly closer to Laura so their bodies were pressed together and her girlfriend could feel some of the warmth on offer, “provided there is a Round One, you have to sit out.”

Laura had never been so scandalised when her very life wasn’t on the line. This might have been Carmilla’s idea but Laura was the one to take it to Danny and prompt the vampire herself into actually going through with breakfast and a show. Now Carmilla wanted to deny her the reward of Danny Lawrence all hot and sweaty and glistening and rubbing her tired muscles and-

Laura shook herself out of her distracted tangent, Danny had moved on from the cardio portion of her morning routine and had lost her shirt somewhere in the transition to strength training and it was immeasurably distracting.

“I don’t think I’m going to get pneumonia out here, but if you want to risk it just to torture me,” Laura left the statement hanging, resting her head on Carmilla’s shoulder and sampling from the assorted baked goods. She thanked Perry silently for keeping Danny’s horrid fruits in a different compartment. Laura spied the disgusting green horror Danny called a vitamin filled protein mix sitting several levels of bleacher below them.

“Alright,” Carmilla agreed with her far too quickly and Laura knew she had misstepped. “You are explaining to Danny why you have the sniffles after coming out to watch her. I don’t think she’ll ever agree to this again and then we’ll have to lie if we want to watch her anymore.”

Damn it, Laura cursed to herself. She glared at Carmilla, annoyed beyond belief that she actually had a point. Danny would argue endlessly if anything happened to them that could be even vaguely traced back to Danny’s own actions.

“Give me the fucking coat and pray to vampire Jesus that Danny’s too tired for sex after the six million push-ups she’s doing,” growled Laura. She tugged the coat around her shoulders and glowered at Carmilla’s stupid triumphant grin for the remainder of Danny’s workout.

Danny wasn’t tired, in fact she had energy to spare.

Though she was concerned by the seven cupcakes Laura ate for ‘breakfast’.

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

**THREE**

 

 

 

Laura didn’t question why Carmilla owned a duster coat. She did raise an eyebrow when it didn’t turn out to be leather, but the duster itself didn’t make ever stop for even the shortest of moments.

The jeweller just outside of the Silas campus was the most modern thing for a full hundred miles in any direction. Which was sad because the most advanced technology in the small yet elegant building was what the three of them were there for, and it wasn’t exactly new.

Carmilla’s rant against gold, platinum, and diamonds had been monumental both in scope and passion. Laura and Danny couldn’t do anything but sit and stare in awe at her expansive speech. Gold valuation, platinum was apparently ugly in her eyes, and a full twenty minutes on advertising making diamonds followed by a fucking power-point presentation on the subject of blood diamonds.

Still, the vampire wanted a wedding ring and the only somewhat traditional metal she didn’t have a strong opinion for was silver, which had some obvious problems for Carmilla.

Hence why they had made the trek to a different jeweller, one that was almost modern. They needed another option.

Danny scratched the still-angry red scar in her side, making Laura’s heart pull unpleasantly with guilt. Carmilla seemed to breeze beyond the entire incident with Danny’s possessed sword, though she would, being the relatively innocent one in the situation. Breathing kind of hurt for Laura, though she was assured the damage to her lungs was fully healed. Carmilla had the faintest sliver of a scar on her lower back from the initial cut from the sword.

Laura met Danny’s eyes bravely, facing the guilt head-on. She had stabbed the hell out of her girlfriend and ended up with a marriage proposal from her other girlfriend. If they held her cursed actions against her, then neither Danny nor Carmilla were interested in showing it. “You okay?”

Danny sighed, “are you going to stop asking? It’s alright, just healing.”

Laura’s face flushed red and she opened the car door for Carmilla. The vampire had called backseat on the way to the car, confusing her lovers immensely until she pulled out her phone and typed something on it the entire twenty minute journey to the jewellers. Neither of them asked, Carmilla would share in time.

Renewed trust in each other was one of the few positive outcomes from their week-long ordeal. Laura grinned up at Danny as Carmilla exited the car, absently pecking Laura’s cheek in thanks as she went. Danny smiled back, matching Laura’s bright attitude easily. She stopped toying with her wound.

“Told you so,” gloated Danny, bowing slightly to Laura while Carmilla continued to seemingly ignore them both in favour of the clearly important whatever she was doing with her phone. “Feels great, doesn’t it?”

Laura huffed and grabbed Danny’s arm to drag her laughing girlfriend behind her as she called back, “yeah, yeah! Doing stupid little gestures feels amazing, shut the hell up, Lawrence!”

That only made Danny laugh louder, and it took Laura a moment to figure out exactly why.

“You haven’t signed the papers yet, so you’re still Danny Annoying-Ass Lawrence!”

They were officially making a scene, and neither young woman could find it within herself to care.

Carmilla finally looked up from her screen, raising an eyebrow at her fiances. She internally balked at the new title, the spreading warmth throughout her body quashing the urge to run from the commitment before it could gain any steam. She made her choice and it was, for better or for worse, these two idiots who were yelling at each other in front of the place Carmilla wanted to get her damn wedding ring from.

God, she was so ready for the weight on her hand and the words or symbols or whatever tattooed on Laura’s body and names branded onto Danny’s entire identity.

“You two done?” Carmilla shouted at them, wondering how Danny had hoisted Laura over her shoulders so quickly. “Put her down, Danny, you’re still not totally healed.”

“Oh! She’s not healed yet, not Laura’s being treated like a side of beef!” Laura yelled from her position atop Mt Lawrence. “Why would we be concerned about that!”

Danny twirled quickly in a tight circle before she set Laura back down on her feet, laughing all the way. Laura stumbled around for a few moments, grasping at Danny for help staying upright. “You okay?” Danny asked, though the sincerity wasn’t all there considering that it was said through dying giggles. Laura shoved her so hard, Danny stumbled back into the side of the car.

“I think she’s fine, Red,” Carmilla effectively ended their playful argument. “Shall we?”

Danny pushed off the car and wrapped her arms around Laura’s waist, lifting her into the air yet again. Laura squealed as she was carried to the door of the jewellers. Carmilla rolled her eye and followed them into the shop, hoping that the people running the place didn’t have an objection to loud idiots invading their business.

The interior was roughly as old as everything else seemed to be in Styria. It was at least as well-aged as Carmilla, like the rest of the area. It was new when she was young, and now everything was old as she remained young.

Carmilla kept an eye on the calendar when Danny’s birthday rolled around, anxiously watching another number on the cake tick by, getting further away from eighteen with each passing year. She thought she had a plan, but it was a long shot and she only had one grey hair from one short bout of poisoning as evidence that it would even work.

The proprietor was waiting for them behind the glittering counter, using chemicals to clean some stock that got into Carmilla’s nose and caused her to sneeze repeatedly. Laura laughed but Danny was immediately alarmed.

“Is that silver?” Danny barked at the jeweller who dropped what she was doing and backed away from her cleaning in one movement. “Maybe you should wait outside?”

“I’ll be okay, a little bit never does much, right?” Carmilla soothed Danny’s worry. Laura stopped laughing, sobered by the memory of Carmilla lying potentially dying in their bed. “We need a ring,” Carmilla cut swiftly through the tension by addressing the jeweller.

The woman seemed confused, though Carmilla couldn’t possibly imagine why.

“Just one ring?”

Carmilla stepped forward and grabbed Laura and Danny’s shoulders, yanking them back as they both attempted to speak at the same time. “One stupid Lord of the Rings joke, and I absolutely do not need a damn ring, clear?”

They shared a look behind her head that clearly communicated that they didn’t believe her, but silenced their respective jokes anyway.

“Yes, dear,” Danny muttered.

“We shall try,” Laura added, scuffing her toes against the ground and toying with her borrowed duster. It generally made Carmilla seem even more threatening than usual. Laura? Made an already short woman seem positively, and adorably tiny. “Can we try that again?”

The jeweller smiled kindly at the three of them, though that may have been because she had clearly connected the dots and figured that Carmilla was a vampire. Laura managed to broadcast Carmilla’s grand weakness along with her imminent wedding announcement that morning and it made front page news all over Styria.

“I need a ring and I don’t want gold, silver, or platinum,” announced Carmilla, releasing her lovers to their barely restrained bout of nerd-tastic elation. “I’ve been informed that you can provide me with more permanent options?”

Laura nodded enthusiastically while Danny got distracted by something shiny off in one of the other display cases. Carmilla sighed again, and grinned at her own utterly stupid life choices.

“I hope you mean tungsten or titanium,” the woman replied, mild fear encroaching on the edges of her voice. “I don’t deal in magic or runes or whatever, just metals and gems.”

Carmilla’s grin grew, she liked this woman. “I’m thinking tungsten, much less shiny.”

“And it goes with most of her wardrobe,” Danny added over her shoulder, her entire attentions caught by whatever was in the display case. “You might want to grab a few options, they can’t be resized or altered at all once they’re set.”

Carmilla glanced at her curiously, carefully making her way over to her intended. Laura didn’t notice either one of them and instead made small talk with the jeweller when her partners went silent. Danny jumped as Carmilla’s hand flattened on her lower back, her other hand reaching to intertwine with Danny’s.

“What’s caught your attention?” Carmilla couldn’t quite keep the worry and concern out of her voice. Vaguely, she could hear Laura asking the woman about prices and available sizes. The practicality of it all left a weirdly warm sensation in her gut. “Not another possessed weapon I hope?”

Danny snorted, squeezing Carmilla’s hand. “Once was more than enough for me.” Danny’s attention finally snapped away from the shiny trinkets in the case, bending to nuzzle affectionately in Carmilla’s hair. She offered what comfort she could as Carmilla brought their conjoined hands to rest over the healing hole in Danny’s side. Danny felt the heavy blade thrust into her, the white hot burning of metal slicing into her body and the screaming agony of the resulting weeks of recovery.

“One taste of military life, and she runs off to join the army on us,” Carmilla teased, “looking for medals to pin on yourself already?” Danny groaned in frustration, forcing her grip on Carmilla’s hand to the point of discomfort. “There is no need for violence, dear one.”

“It’s what I’m good at, and it keeps me in Styria,” she explained, leaning back into Carmilla’s gentle hold. “I joined to stay with you.”

Carmilla grunted, “how long is boot camp?”

Sighing, Danny answered, “six months?”

Her hand felt like it was breaking as Carmilla forgot how human Danny was, crushing her fingers together in a vice grip. “What?”

“I’m lucky they let me defer my enlistment to hang around while you both graduate, six months now is better than six months directly after I graduated,” Danny explained.

“We’re going to go through all this, rings and vows and names, and you’re going to up and leave us practically immediately for half a year?” Carmilla couldn’t stop the beginnings of throat tightening from invading her voice. The welling of pressure through her entire upper body threatened to burst out in tears and screaming and scratching at Danny’s chest. Carmilla let go of Danny’s hand, not wanting to cause her pain via broken fingers.

“I believe the traditional way to dump your army spouse is through a ‘Dear Jane’ letter,” Danny tried to joke. Carmilla reigned in her breathing, willing her throat to loosen and the tears to recede. “I have two months, then I have to be there.”

Laura’s attention finally wandered their way, her concern immediate. Using what little tact she had, Laura asked the jeweller to just give them a selection to choose from before she slowly crept over the small distance to see what was bothering them both.

“I’m aware of how this is going to work,” Carmilla seethed. “I wasn’t as prepared as I thought I was.”

Danny could barely hear her speak, but the stress in her voice was clear and Danny’s arms wrapped around her vampire, pulling her close. Carmilla didn’t fight her, clutching handfuls of Danny’s shirt in her fists. Danny’s grip tightened until Carmilla wasn’t sure if she could breath, Danny certainly wasn’t. She listened to the heart pounding away in the chest she was pulled into, and the tears threatened to come right back.

“I-” Danny started, only to be cut off by Laura.

“You told her?” Laura asked gently, reaching out to rub Carmilla’s upper back and tactfully ignoring the catching of her breath. “We aren’t this co-dependant, are we?”

Carmilla knew they weren’t. She knew exactly what was wrong with her, though keeping her problem to herself seemed like the best course of action for the last few months. Telling either Laura or Danny would just lead to them worrying needlessly over her, and they needed to focus on healing their much more obvious wounds. “I’m just tired.”

Danny’s arms twitched while Laura’s hand froze. Carmilla winced, knowing that they wouldn’t drop it now she’d given them the slightest inkling that something was wrong. Carmilla didn’t do tired, she did groggy and lazy, but actually tired wasn’t that much of a problem.

“And by ‘tired’ you mean?” Danny’s chest rumbled as she spoke. Carmilla squeezed her eyes shut against the hurt in her voice. She gathered some courage and pulled her head away from Danny, though she didn’t relinquish her grasp of her shirt.

“I mean I’m exhausted,” she answered, letting the strain come out in her words instead of forcing it away like she had been since the La Maupin incident. “You try being used as a battery to conjure horses and swords and snow for a week, it stays with a girl.”

“Are you eating enough?” Laura stared pointedly at the arm guard Danny had taken to wearing on the days after she and Carmilla played Hunter and Prey in the woods surrounding Silas. If anyone asked, Danny was quick to assure them that she was just getting into archery in a big way after her significant falling out with swords of all kinds. “I’m sure we can find people to donate if you need it.”

Carmilla grinned wide, “it’s getting better with time, no more blood necessary.”

“You’re sure?” Carmilla could hear Danny consider if she could stand to lose more blood. Carmilla jabbed a finger into her stomach to stop that train of thought before it could get going. “Why?”

Laura snorted at the exaggerated whine slipping through Danny’s lips. The jeweller was mercifully still ignoring their behaviour. Carmilla resolved to overpay for her ring, the woman would more than earn it if she could deal with them for however long it took to find one that fit well enough.

“Because you’re only supposed to donate blood once every three months and you end up feeding me almost every month.” Carmilla took a moment to bask in the majesty of the embarrassed Danny Lawrence. Laura folded her arms and stared at her taller fiance in disbelief.

“You what?” Danny flinched, good things always followed that particular tone from Laura. Like being banished to the Summer Society House or the Lawrence-Hollis War Over Long-Term Life Plans. “Is it really that often?”

Danny let them be mad at her for a few more moments, they felt better about themselves when she was nice like that. But only for a little while. “Firstly, you don’t take nearly as much as donating does, Madame Tiny Stomach,” Carmilla burrowed back into Danny’s embrace, “and secondly, I am aware of my limitations and I am more than capable of knowing when I’m exceeding them.”

Carmilla imagined the intense glare-off going on over her head. Danny stood a chance of winning for once, pointing out any hint of hypocrisy on her part was the easiest way to win an argument with Laura. The ‘I will decide to do or not do this thing you think isn’t safe for me’ stance Laura took was one that always crumbled when it was Danny or Carmilla risking themselves. Carmilla generally shrugged it off, but Danny never, ever let her get away with it.

“You’re sure it’s not hurting you long-term?”

Victory to Danny. Carmilla smiled as she turned her head so she could see Laura without sacrificing the warm embrace surrounding her. “She’s been doing it for two whole years now, cupcake, something would have gone wrong by now.”

“I’ll figure something out for you before I leave,” Danny promised Carmilla, taking victory over Laura with more grace than usual. “Can’t have you turn caged animal on Laura again, right?”

If Carmilla could blush, she would. That particular incident was better left forgotten. “Thank you,” she hissed, taking her light tone for the attempt to soothe the future loneliness Carmilla would have to endure. “We do have three or four more pressing issues than what you running off to join the army is going to do to us.”

Carmilla finally let go of Danny’s shirt and turned to face the jeweller. The woman had her sizing equipment out and a box filled with grey and black rings in all different sizes.

“I am required to inform you that if something happens to your hand and the ring needs to be removed for whatever reason-” the jeweller started to explain, clearly parroting some heath and safety guideline speech.

“I lose a finger before the ring comes off, got it,” Carmilla finished as she pulled her way out of Danny’s arms.

Laura swallowed heavily, momentary fear crossing her face. Danny held out a hand, the contact meaning to banish the trepidation from her lover’s mind. Together they came to stand on either side of Carmilla.


	6. The Flower Girl

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've become a bit disheartened with the whole fic writing thing, so I'm gonna take a break from posting in this universe so I don't grow to hate it.

**ONE**

 

 

 

 

They start out as ‘I’m Sorry I Broke Three of Your Ribs’ apology flowers. Flowers because while Carmilla knew Danny liked Laura, weapons, and Carmilla herself apparently, she already had two of those and weapons didn’t make a decent apology gift. Their little foray into the Library has sent waves out across the Silas campus so Carmilla had to wear one of Laura’s godforsaken hoodies to fetch them, which she felt only added to the weight of her genuine remorse.

“If you’re here to tell me you’ve changed your mind, please just get it over with,” Danny said immediately after Carmilla entered the room she shared with Laura. Their girlfriend was stubbornly insistent on Danny staying with them as she recovered. Carmilla thought that she was still trying to make her two girlfriends play nice with each other. Latching on to Laura’s own obliviousness about the shift in the situation, Carmilla started to form a plan to toy with her little Cupcake. All while putting her best foot forward with Danny. Win-win for the vampire.

She fled the room after this initial encounter. The flowers took a battering as she raced around campus avoiding her own nervousness. It took the better part of an hour to gather up the confidence to meet Danny properly.

The door wasn’t locked. A lapse in security that she would have Danny look at as soon as she was back on her feet. After she agreed to Carmilla's forming plans for their love lives.

"If you try to feed me cookies again, Hollis, we might have to talk about this relationship thing," Danny growled from her bed. Carmilla smirked, Laura would offer confectionery to their girlfriend who likes oranges and fruit and vegetables and other horrible foods. "Don't think I won't leave you!"

"Keep talking, Lawrence, no one's going to believe you," Carmilla cooed. "I might take pity on you if you're really nice to me though."

Danny barked out a laugh. "Fangface, I will treat you like a princess for a month if you keep her away from me with her 'help'," she promised and probably meant it. Carmilla kind of wanted to take her up on the offer.

"I am not here to play hero vampire, Xena," she explained, taking a careful seat next to the injured woman. "I am here to apologise, actually."

Danny reached out and grabbed one of Carmilla's hands. "I was kidding about the getting it over with before," she rushed out, barely stopping between words, "and I would like another shot at a date that doesn't take place in the most haunted place on the planet. I feel like that hindered my game unreasonably."

Danny fell silent as she caught sight of the bunch of daisies clutched in Carmilla's free hand. Her breath caught for just long enough for Carmilla to notice.

If she could blush, Carmilla would be radioactive.

She awkwardly placed the flowers into Danny's lap, patting them twice once she let them go. "Flowers aren't horrible for apologies, right?" She fidgeted with the hem of her skirt, not meeting Danny's eyes even as the other woman picked up the flowers and turned them over with amazement shining in her eyes.

Danny cleared her throat and then swallowed heavily. "Give me another chance and we'll call it even."

Carmilla pretended to consider it for a moment, humming away her previous embarrassment. "Well that's not fair."

Danny was immediately panic stricken, eyes wild and mouth opening and closing in silence. She looked like she was going to argue the point. Eventually her shoulders slumped. "If you feel like-"

"Okay stop! I'm kidding," Carmilla reassured her, surging forward to capture Danny's lips with her own. Danny moaned and went to lean forward until her broken ribs protested. Carmilla pulled back for Danny's safety, it wouldn't do to have her apology result in further injury. "I meant there's no need for you to have another chance. I'm thinking dinner next week? I will pick you up from here at seven."

"From here?" Danny was cute when she was confused. "Why from here?"

"You aren't annoyed at Laura for force-feeding you cookies all day?" Carmilla asked with suggestion filling her voice. "I don't think she's noticed we've kissed and made up our immediate differences."

Comprehension dawned on Danny. "Am I getting a gentle-vampire caller?"

The Southern Belle impression was a bit much but Carmilla liked it anyway. “I am not wearing a suit or anything like that if that’s what you mean.” Danny only grinned wider. “Yeah, vampire caller knocking on your door, if that’s what you might want.”

“With a dozen red roses,” added Danny, fingers playing through the many white flowers still sitting in her lap. “Or whatever, not necessary,” she shrugged, trying so hard to keep any hint of embarrassment out of her demeanour. Failed completely.

Carmilla wondered with a renewed sense of awe at how enraptured Danny was by the barely considered gesture of affection, or as it was more commonly known, a bribe.

“How about one really pretty one?” Carmilla countered, offering Danny an easy way out. “I know a girl who-”

“Yes!” Danny interjected, her ears burning. “Won’t your idea hurt Laura?”

It was Carmilla’s turn to shrug. “She will be so confused that she won’t have time to be hurt before we skip right on through to annoyed and turned on. The best kind of Laura,” she mused with briefly dazed eyes. She didn’t notice Danny squirming with discomfort, and instead focused on what she would be wearing when she showed up at her own door to pick up her girlfriend’s girlfriend for a regular human date.

Laura’s reaction was bound to be priceless and Carmilla made a mental note to have one of Laura’s own cameras running when she came to the door.

She lost herself in what in the name of hell Danny Lawrence wore on a date that started with being given a fairly unique rose. Carmilla kind of wanted to talk her into a suit, she would look so much better in it than Carmilla herself.

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 **TWO**  

 

 

 

Danny was pacing, like she couldn't restrain her own nervous energy. Laura shifted every so often, trying to make her discomfort known. Danny was aware of what Laura must have thought was subtlety, but was electing to ignore it. Let her get started on the squirming now and burn some energy so she couldn't get mad later.

Danny felt Laura's eyes on her, taking in the meticulously done make-up, the really too-tight skinny jeans, and the low-cut top with an appreciative yet suspicious leer. Her nerves were real, though the pacing was for show. She didn't want to just throw the new development in her relationship with Carmilla in Laura's face, though she was going to make her girlfriend work for the clemency.

"Is there a modelling gig you haven't told me about?" Laura finally broke as Danny's ankles started to burn from all her sudden turns. She stopped all movement and turned to stare at Laura like she had grown at least five more heads. "Or a Summer Society party you don't want me going to for my own protection?"

"You can go to whatever party you want, and I promise I won't stop you," Danny replied, completely ignoring the undertone of Laura's questions. "And I have not been paid to have pictures taken of me as far as I know."

Laura huffed and reached behind her to snatch a pillow from her bed, throwing it with considerable force directly at Danny's head. She was lucky Danny caught it otherwise very annoyed words would have to be traded. "Danny?"

"Yes Laura?" Danny smiled as sweetly as she could, reigning in her energy to sit on the edge of the bed. Laura watched every move her body made, which provided a great boon to Danny's confidence. One she would need if she was going to survive the night. "Can I help you?"

Laura's nose scrunched up in that way that made Danny's knees go weak, and her fingers curled into claws while she searched in frustration for the best possible words. "Miss Lawrence, is there any particular reason you're all dressed up and bursting with energy?"

Danny teased her further, adjusting her bracelets and fixing an imaginary flaw in her hair. Laura shifted on the bed with interest and impatience. Danny continued to adjust herself and even took out her phone to check on the time and the many emails that were always there no matter what she did.

"Danny!" Laura shouted, not taking one more second of the stalling. The sting was taken out of the bite when she gave up the tough act and whined, "please?"

Danny wanted to kiss her, but that would go against all of the twenty seconds of planning that went into tonight and she couldn't have that time go wasted.

"I may or may not have a date tonight and they didn't want to go anywhere near the Summer Society while being a 'potential suitor' so I figured it would be okay if they picked me up here, if that's alright with you?" Danny rushed all in one breath. Laura's mouth fell open. Danny struggled to keep her expression neutral, not wanting to give the game away before they really got started. "Laura?"

Laura shook her head free of shock and closed her mouth. She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth and stared at Danny with her eyebrows knitting together. "You have a date?"

Oh god, Danny nearly gave up then and there at Laura's little worried voice. She didn't seem heartbroken, so that was a win. They had never once discussed exclusivity, Danny had been entirely too scared to bring the topic up and Carmilla made her position known by scent marking Laura every chance she got. Still, Carmilla was looking forward to messing with her tiny idiot, Danny had to keep strong and continue being unduly cruel to Laura.

"I found someone I wanted to spend more time with in a romantic kind of way," explained Danny, "a date is generally how you do that."

Laura stuttered over her words for the longest time, the panic rising in her visibly. "Is that what the flowers 'the Summer Society girls will just use for target practice' were about? A gift from your new lover?"

Laura Hollis: Zero to irrationally jealous in one easy step. Danny could have laughed, and wisely didn't. She had survived at Silas by not making ridiculous mistakes.

"When someone really pretty that you don't totally hate gives you a bunch of daisies as a recovery gift, you don't exactly say no if they ask you out to dinner." Danny considered her own words. "At least, I didn't feel especially like saying no to such a reasonable request."

"You have a girlfriend!" Laura barked, gesturing wildly to herself. Danny opened her mouth to point out the flaw in that particular totally expected argument. "Hey! You had more than fair warning about Carmilla and you knew that's how it would be going all along and I have tried my best to help you both get along with each other but there's just so much tension there and no one is willing to help me with you two and there's only one of me!"

Danny reached across the bed to take one of Laura's hands in her own. "Exactly! This is clearly a different situation from you and Carmilla," she placated with words that hopefully didn't sound quite as rehearsed as the did in her head. "Can I please go on my date, which is almost inevitably going to crash and burn anyway?"

Laura considered it, or she pretended to consider it, Danny could never tell if she was being serious about this kind of thing at all. "Why are you going if it's already a write-off?"

Danny shrugged, "more flowers, duh."

Laura did not seem impressed. "Bullshit."

"You're cute when you're jealous?" Danny tried again, Laura shook her head. "Fine! It's because of you and how I feel for you, happy?"

"So very," Laura gloated, insufferably smug. Then she thought about the implications of Danny’s statement and frowned. She was cut off from further cruelty and questioning by a set of sharp knocks at the door.

Laura jumped almost clear off the bed, her entire body tensing as she glared at the offending door and the villain on the other side of it. Danny rolled her eyes, there was no way Laura could deal with her actually looking elsewhere for another partner and Danny was willing to wait for her girlfriend to figure this fact out. Danny pushed off the bed and taking her time to torture Laura further. Laura's chest rumbled faintly with a barely concealed exhale of a growl. Danny found her reaction to be strangely encouraging, though a little worrying.

"You alright there, Hollis?" Danny asked over her shoulder, not turning to look at her girlfriend. Laura properly growled in response and audibly shoved her nose back into the book she was supposedly reading. Danny shrugged, "suit yourself."

Danny hesitated at the door, one hand wrapped around the handle. She took three calming breaths and yanked it open as slowly as her excitement would allow. In retrospect, it was a minor miracle that she hadn't smacked herself in the face with it.

Carmilla wasn't wearing a suit, as promised. The short skirt and the blazer that had to belong to Laura did the job of conveying her seriousness well enough for Danny. The thigh-high stockings left Danny looking forward to delightful distraction all night. Somewhere behind her, she registered Laura's jealous growling shifting into a pleased and no doubt smug humming.

"We may have underestimated how insufferable she is going to be about this," said Carmilla, stepping around Danny into her own room. She pointedly ignored Laura, pretending that her girlfriend didn't exist while she was focused completely on Danny and their potential together. "You want to give her the 'I only like you because you're pretty' speech you gave me? Might shut her up for a bit."

Danny grabbed her jacket from its place resting over the back of Laura's ludicrously expensive desk chair. Carmilla turned her back on Laura, getting up into Danny's personal space with her seductive eyes.

She had been holding a hand behind her back, and now brought it in front of her, revealing a deep purple rose with bright yellow edges.

"Oh!" Laura interjected into the silence. "You're where the daisies came from!"

Carmilla couldn't help but giggle, taking Danny's composure down with her. "Did you think our dear Danny had a secret admirer?"

Laura scoffed. "Clearly I was right, because here you are!"

"She's a genius!" Danny exclaimed, lightly reaching out for the rose. Carmilla ducked her head, hair falling in front of her face in uncharacteristic bashfulness. "And you're being very sweet."

Carmilla scuffed her heavy boots against each other, drawing Laura's attention away from her accusatory glaring. "Maybe I want to be more than 'pretty'."

Danny took the rose and laid it across her current novel with more care than her size suggested. "Am I going to live that down anytime soon?"

Carmilla's hesitance disappeared in a flash, brightening with a chance to tease the giant. "Not for my eternal lifetime at least. Hey Fruitcake?" Laura stopped her gaping and raised her eyebrows. "Did you know she was only interested in you for your looks?"

Laura's scandalised expression was a sight to behold. "The girl bro who followed me home only wanted me 'cause I'm cute? Excuse me while I faint!"

"You know, we don't have to do this dinner thing," interjected Danny, her face heating up at their mutual teasing. "Although this is gorgeous, where'd you get it?"

Danny stopped being embarrassed, refocusing on the single rose Carmilla brought for her. That shut Carmilla right up though Laura had to stuff her face in a pillow to hide both her amusement at Danny and the bursting joy in her chest at her two girlfriend's apparently deciding to give each other a chance. Like she had been telling them both for weeks now, idiots.

"I know a girl, perks of being a million years old," Carmilla answered as succinctly as possible. She opened the door and gestured for Danny to follow her. "If you don't mind?"

Laura peeked out from behind her hiding pillow to catch Danny's overly gooey eyes examine the rose in detail as she struggled to pull herself away from Carmilla's gift.

"Well, since you asked so nicely."

 

 

* * *

 

**THREE**

 

 

 

  
The papers were the lightest ones Danny No-Middle-Name Lawrence had ever had to sign. Compared with the scrunched up face of pain Laura wore as the words were etched over her heart and the hesitant awe with which Carmilla watched moonlight glittering along her tungsten ring, signing away part of her name was nothing. Wearing her old 'New Hollis' jersey, Danny locked herself in the one of the many empty rooms of the house Carmilla led them to and slumped against a wall with the papers and a pen.

The jersey faded over the years, though Danny was sure to have the words re-printed whenever they started to disappear. The house was spacious and Danny could tell the windows let in glorious sunlight at all hours of the day, perfect for her more feline girlfriend.

Wife?

Sign the papers, then that's what they are. Not legally but close enough for now. This house to live in if it cleared Laura's shockingly in-depth inspection. The Styria Armed Forces would wait for her to settle down, and would equally accept her name change without a second thought in their bureaucratic machine. They were desperate for experience, and Danny had years of it to spare.

"Three signatures and a fuck-load of initials, not hard," she tried to calm down her racing heart. Danny knew Carmilla could hear her sudden distress, and was hopefully was taking it on face value as their odd equivalent to pre-wedding jitters. They would have a ceremony of some kind at some point in the future, probably after Danny got done building the garden pavilion on the relatively modest land surrounding their new home.

The pen cracked when she considered how long it would take to do the work herself, and wished that Carmilla was ready to accept others anywhere near the new place. Danny rolled her eyes so hard it hurt, the woman's need to scent-mark absolutely everything in the house before anyone else could 'pollute' it was a double-edged sword. Either it was bad, because Carmilla still had doubts about Laura and Danny's commitment to their relationship despite being the ones to take more permanent routes to display their vows. Or the good, and she was more comfortable than ever around them both, displaying every more basic, animal urge that overtook her on occasion without a hint of apprehension.

Laura moved on to the attic while Danny considered her decision. Last chance to change your mind, she told herself, watching dust fall from the ceiling as Laura worked her way through the piles of boxes filled with crap that would almost certainly try to kill her at least once. Danny grinned, waiting for the squeak or yelp that would kick her body into high gear and up the ladder to be by her wife's side, ready to support her in whatever she got herself into this week.

Carmilla would beat her up there, her blistering speed taking her at lightning pace if she didn't just poof up to the attic without a second thought. She did that with infuriating frequency.

Scenting the attic would take Carmilla the better part of the week, so Danny scratched out a plan in her mind to move in furniture and clean the house while her vampire wife did her settling down thing. Setting up the kitchen to her own high standards could take up to a month if the one hospitality supply store within reasonable distance to their new Styrian home was anything less than excellent. Then she would be free to hire contractors to build Laura's landscaping visions. Danny would rather pull out her own teeth than deal with it on her own and Carmilla would be absolutely zero help until Danny got fed up and feigned an injury.

Then it would get built in a heartbeat. Then promptly fall down because for a woman in her fourth century, Carmilla had exactly zero practical skills that she wasn't given with a bite. Not that Danny was complaining, the broody philosopher thing worked for her, and she could watch the other woman read a dusty hardcover all day long if it wasn't especially creepy.

Danny let Laura's rushing around fade from her awareness, taking in the room she had fled to once the completely official papers had arrived in the mail, or by carrier hawk, she wasn't clear on that one. These were the ones sent by the Armed Forces and would change her name in every facet of her life, past, present, and future. Branding herself with two names not her own.

If only her right hand would move. If it did she could move on and start designing the office she would assemble for Laura in her hideout. The room barely got any natural light, so Carmilla would hate it in here, and Laura despised the sun with the cold fury of the Arctic while she was working.

A big corner desk, heavy blinds on the windows, and posters framed along the walls. Danny would let Laura deal with her own equipment and Carmilla had declared herself a rug expert with a shocking lack of innuendo behind it. The office would look amazing and Laura would be happy here. No demi-gods to stir up and a thousand miles away from any member of Carmilla's old families. Either of them. The Karnsteins were bad and the vampires were worse.

So Danny was going to sign the damn papers. Carmilla deserved a better family. Laura's dad was great but he wasn't remotely present. Danny could give them both what they needed and there was no way she was giving up the opportunity.

She had the pen on the paper and was about to sign when she was interrupted by a knock on the door. Laura's lightweight footsteps were still dancing up above, so that left one option discounting something trying to kill her.

"Can I come in?" Potential threats didn't ask for entry so Danny replied in the positive and Carmilla's head appeared. “I think we should let Laura have this room if you're going to take the basement for your little gym.”

Quite possibly the most domesticated thing any talking vampire cat had ever said, and Danny blushed over the fact that it was being given freely to her. She made no move to hide her own previous uncertainties, leaving her change of name forms in clear view of Carmilla.

“My thoughts exactly,” she agreed, watching her lover as she crossed the room and settled down against the wall. Carmilla resisted her natural urge to cuddle into the nearest warm body she trusted and instead placed a single bluebell on Danny's raised knee. “What's that for?”

Carmilla shrugged, taking Danny's left hand in her own and toying with the lines like she always did. “There's a garden out back and that's the only flower in it. End of season had murdered everything else.”

The simple explanation shifted Danny's view of her soon-to-be wife, she wasn't lazy or unskilled, just careful about what she shared and who she shared it with.

“Hey Laura?” Danny shouted so her other love could hear her. “Could you come down here please?”

There was a thump and a swear but the ladder creaked and Laura's dust covered head was poking curiously into the room. “Mine, right?”

Carmilla kissed the back of Danny's hand to stifle her amused grin while Danny motioned Laura over to sit on her free side.

“Yes, who else would want to work in a dungeon?” Laura looked like she was going to argue. “Not enough light for kitty and this Amazon needs fresh air, so you don't get a choice here.”

Carmilla gave up on her attempt at being cool, outright laughing at the offended look on Laura's face. “She's got you there, Cupcake, and I won't be arguing.”

Laura huffed and folded her arms. She looked down and seemed to finally notice exactly what the heck was sitting next to Danny's legs. The pen cracked worse as both her lovers turned their scrutiny to her, and Danny wished she had done this alone but there was no turning back now.

“We held your hands while you got your tattoo, and sat through nineteen ring matching sessions to get your ring just right,” she explained, freeing her fingers from Carmilla's to reach for her left hand. Her right arm slung itself around Laura, long palm coming to rest directly over the black words above her heart. “It is only fair that you're both here while I sign these.”

Danny twisted the black ring around Carmilla's finger while she traced the words in German that connected Laura to them both. They were far too content, Carmilla was practically purring. Laura did that thing Danny could never fully understand as her chin lifted and her shoulders squared themselves. Danny couldn't abide by their comfort, they hadn't nearly earned it yet. Especially after the days of teasing she'd endured over not being able to sign on three little dotted lines.

“I do have one concern, though,” she admitted quietly and in her wounded damsel voice so no one would explode at her right away.

“Still?” Laura replied first, slapping her hands over her mouth as soon as she said it. Eyes wide and head shaking, Danny forced herself not to take the slightest pleasure in her fear of saying the wrong thing. Artemis knew Danny spent the first six months of their real relationship walking on imagined eggshells.

“What is it, dear? Do shut up, darling,” Carmilla snarled at Laura, though she was sunshine and smiles as she addressed Danny. Laura whined and Danny felt her heart kick into a faster beat. Danny flexed the arm she had enveloping Laura to provide some gentle reassurance.

Danny let Laura's worry fester and Carmilla's concern grow until they were both on pins and needles awaiting her next words. “What's having a middle name like?”

Laura's heart might as well have stopped for the stunted second she didn't react. Carmilla suffered no such hesitation and had a hand in Danny's hair tugging their lips together before Danny could be pleased with herself.

“Danny, that was mean!” Laura eventually recovered, pressing Danny's arm into the wall until the sudden loss of feeling forced her to break away from Carmilla. “What if I don't want you having my name, you big jerk?”

Carmilla laughed once, louder than normal and light as a feather. “The middle name's mine, so you can't take it back, Hollis,” she bit with no malice. Laura pouted in response but didn't move from her spot. “My name's awesome, so make it official already, New Hollis.”

Danny flicked her on the nose playfully, “nope. Never call me that again. I will be wanting a divorce.”

Carmilla gave an indignant squawk. “Laura literally wrote it on your back!” Carmilla argued, tugging at the jersey. Both of her humans stared at her in disbelief. “What?”

“You know that rubbing all over everything thing you've been doing for days?” Laura asked with not even an attempt to hide her own amusement at one of Carmilla's many blind spots. Carmilla nodded hesitantly, as if she felt she were navigating her way through a minefield.

Danny stepped in before Laura could have her chance to explain, which would lead to a winding tale that missed the point of Laura's little branding exercise.

“Laura's done the exact same thing, and is doing it right now,” Danny rushed out before Laura could continue talking. Danny lifted her right shoulder as far as it would go with Laura's vice grip keeping it in place. “Laura's arm now. Laura's name all over me and all my best sporting goods. Laura's human blanket when she's cold-”

“She keeps stealing my jackets,” Carmilla interjected with her eyes narrowing with suspicion.

“Exactly, we belong to Laura as far as the rest of the world needs to know. Partnership is for private lives, pride comes first in the outside world.”

Carmilla grinned, feral and Danny saw the joke before she said it and closed her own mental picturing to it. “Cupcake, most animals just piss on the things they want to claim, there's no need to get a printing press involved.”

Laura went fluorescent red as Carmilla rubbed her cheek over Danny's jersey-covered arm, dominating the words with her own possessiveness.

“Okay! No fighting over who's a better top please, you can have a name each and that's the last I'm hearing about this for the next week,” Danny easily stopped the fight before it began. “Can I?”

She forced her arm free of Laura and held the papers against her knees. Carmilla and Laura spent the next several seconds glaring at each other, willing the other to back down, tattoos and rings be damned. Danny wondered if, as her younger self was tackling Carmilla during that awful Zeta party, she would ever believe that the two of them would be silently battling for her naming rights.

Carmilla broke first, like she always did. “Well, with this ink, I thee wed,” she joked, earning herself a poke in the leg from Laura's toes and a kiss to the side of her head from Danny. “Shut up, I'm hilarious.”

“Yeah you are,” Danny agreed without sarcasm. She signed the first line while burying her face in Carmilla's hair, “wifey dearest.”

Carmilla shivered and Laura's hand moved to her thigh. Laura shuffled the papers, finding the next blank space. “Babe,” she cooed, coaxing Danny's attention away from Carmilla. The vampire responded by sliding her hand underneath the 'Property of Laura Hollis' jersey, attaching her lips to Danny's neck.

Danny focused just long enough to scribble her signature again, getting immediately distracted by Laura pulling their lips together with strong fingers at her jaw. Carmilla's teeth scraped at her veins, asserting herself as the dangerous one in the room, though Laura's grip, nails pressing into soft skin to keep Danny on her and away from the vampire, made an insistent case.

Danny let this go on, papers crumpling beneath her hands as she was surrounded by Laura and Carmilla. They didn't give her brain a moment to catch up, hands roaming while they fought over her attention. They were normally so good at sharing but the marks covering Danny's neck and the bruising of her lips showed the world that they weren't playing nice today.

"Can I finish this before you two enter into a death match, please?" Danny whined when she was able to pull away from Laura for longer than half a moment. Laura bit her lip but gave in, pulling back to thump against the wall. "Or we can keep on going with this two-thirds married thing we've been doing all week?"

She directed her comment towards Carmilla, who was determined to leave Danny's neck with permanent bruising. Danny allowed it up to this point because they weren't slated to actually leave their new home for at least two days. What harm could it do to allow the vampire her indulgences?

"We should go out for dinner tonight, celebrate such a momentous occasion in style," Carmilla hummed against Danny's neck, licking the bites she left. Danny finally snapped the pen in half, piece of the plastic digging into her hand. "Careful, careful."

"Fuck you, asshole," snapped Danny without any venom behind it. She ducked to kiss any dismay off Carmilla's face and ignored Laura's wandering hand sliding up her stomach until it grazed the bottom of her bra. "Stop right there, the lady wants to go out so we don't have time for that."

Laura pouted, and was summarily ignored by both of her lovers. Danny flipped through the pages, filling in initials on the way back to the final empty dotted line. Laura's hand pressed delightfully comfortable against her abs while Carmilla rested her head against Danny's shoulder. "Do you get to pick a new signature?" Laura wondered out loud, noticing that the final space was asking Danny to sign with her new name.

"I vote for a heart over the 'I' in Hollis and Mircalla," drawled Carmilla, drawing the icon on Danny's leg. Laura and Danny groaned simultaneously. "It's a perfectly reasonable suggestion."

"No," said Danny.

"Absolutely not, she's not five," agreed Laura, dragging her nails over Danny's skin. "Sign the damn thing so we can get dinner over and done with."

Carmilla scoffed. "Always on that one track, sugar," she teased.

Danny seriously considered Carmilla's idea, designing a new way of writing her name over and over again in her mind's eye. The hearts did have their own cute appeal. Maybe just one? She couldn't handle doing her own overly-complicated scribble the exact same way for the rest of her life, so something simpler was definitely on the cards.

An overly large capital 'D' followed by her new middle initial curved like a heart and with a shaky hand she added the name that now tied her to Laura and threw the paper onto the floor.

"Done," she exhaled, breathing stuttering as her body sung with energy and excitement.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, comment if you want more from this little universe, otherwise I have no way to tell if you want more.
> 
> (also I'm having an argument with the middle of Future Horizons, it wants to go to a weird place)


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